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3Sp  William  S'ameEi 


THE  VARIETIES  OF  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE:  A STUDY  IN 
HUMAN  NATURE.  Gifford  Lectures  delivered  at  Edinburgh  in  1901- 
1902.  8vo.  New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta:  Longmans, 
Green  & Co.  1902. 

PRAGMATISM  : A NEW  NAME  FOR  SOME  OLD  WAYS  OF  THINK- 
ING: POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  PHILOSOPHY.  8vo.  New  York, 
London.  Bombay,  and  Calcutta  : Longmans,  Green  & Co.  1907. 

THE  MEANING  OF  TRUTH:  A SEQUEL  TO  “ PRAGMATISM."  8vo. 

New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta:  Longmans,  Green  & Co. 
1909. 

--  A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE:  HIBBERT  LECTURES  ON  THE 
PRESENT  SITUATION  IN  PHILOSOPHY.  8vo.  New  York,  Lon- 
don, Bombay,  and  Calcutta:  Longmans,  Green  & Co.  1909. 

SOME  PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY:  A BEGINNING  OF  AN  IN- 
TRODUCTION TO  PHILOSOPHY.  8vo.  New  York,  London,  Bom- 
bay, and  Calcutta  : Longmans,  Green  & Co.  1911. 

ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM.  8vo.  New  York,  London,  Bom- 
bay, and  Calcutta  : Longmans,  Green  & Co.  1912. 

“"THE  WILL  TO  BELIEVE,  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS  IN  POPULAR 
PHILOSOPHY.  i2mo.  New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta: 
Longmans,  Green  & Co.  1897. 

MEMORIES  AND  STUDIES.  8vo.  New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and 
Calcutta:  Longmans,  Green  & Co.  1911. 

-"THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  2 vols.,  8vo.  New  York : 
Henry  Holt  & Co.  London:  Macmillan  & Co.  1890. 

--  PSYCHOLOGY:  BRIEFER  COURSE.  i2mo.  New  York : Henry  Holt 
& Co.  London  : Macmillan  & Co.  1892. 

-■  TALKS  TO  TEACHERS  ON  PSYCHOLOGY:  AND  TO  STUDENTS 
ON  SOME  OF  LIFE'S  IDEALS.  i2mo.  New  York:  Henry  Holt 
& Co.  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta  : Longmans,  Green  & Co.  2899. 

HUMAN  IMMORTALITY:  TWO  SUPPOSED  OBJECTIONS  TO  THE 
DOCTRINE.  i6mo.  Boston:  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.  1898.  London: 
J.  M.  Dent  & Sons,  Ltd. 

/ 


THE  LITERARY  REMAINS  OF  HENRY  JAMES.  Edited,  with  an 
Introduction,  by  William  James.  With  Portrait.  Crown  8vo.  Boston: 
Houghton  Mifflin  Co.  1885. 


r 


A PLURALISTIC 
UNIVERSE 

Hibbert  Lectures  at  Manchester  College 
on  the  Present  Situation  in  Philosophy 

BY 

WILLIAM  JAMES 


LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO. 

Fourth  Avenue  and  30th  Street,  New  York 
LONDON,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

1920 


COPYRIGHT,  1909,  BY  WILLIAM  JAMES 


ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


FIRST  EDITION  1909 
REPRINTED  AUGUST  I909 
MARCH  1912,  DECEMBER  1916 
JUNE  I92O 


CONTENTS 


LECTURE  I 


The  Tapes  of  Philosophic  Thinking 1 

Our  age  is  growing  philosophical  again,  3.  Change  of  tone  since 
1860,  4.  Empiricism  and  Rationalism  defined,  7.  The  process  of 
Philosophizing:  Philosophers  choose  some  part  of  the  world  to  in- 
terpret the  whole  by,  8.  They  seek  to  make  it  seem  less  strange,  11. 
Their  temperamental  differences,  12.  Their  systems  must  be  rea- 
soned out,  13.  Their  tendency  to  over-technicality,  15.  Excess  of 
this  in  Germany,  17.  The  type  of  vision  is  the  important  thing  in  a 
philosopher,  20.  Primitive  thought,  21.  Spiritualism  and  Material- 
ism : Spiritualism  shows  two  types,  23.  Theism  and  Pantheism,  24. 
Theism  makes  a duality  of  Man  and  God,  and  leaves  Man  an 
outsider,  25.  Pantheism  identifies  Man  with  God,  29.  The  con- 
temporary tendency  is  towards  Pantheism,  30.  Legitimacy  of  our 
demand  to  be  essential  in  the  Universe,  33.  Pluralism  versus 
Monism:  The  ‘each-form’  and  the  ‘all-form’  of  representing  the 
world,  34.  Professor  Jacks  quoted,  35.  Absolute  Idealism  charac- 
terized, 36.  Peculiarities  of  the  finite  consciousness  which  the  Ab- 
solute cannot  share,  38.  The  finite  still  remains  outside  of  absolute 
reality,  40. 


Recapitulation,  43.  Radical  Pluralism  is  to  be  the  thesis  of  these 
lectures,  44.  Most  philosophers  contemn  it,  45.  Foreignness  to  us  of 
Bradley’s  Absolute,  46.  Spinoza  and  ‘ quatenus,’  47.  Difficulty  of 
sympathizing  with  the  Absolute,  48.  Idealistic  attempt  to  interpret 
it,  50.  Professor  Jones  quoted,  52.  Absolutist  refutations  of  Plural- 
ism, 54.  Criticism  of  Lotze’s  proof  of  Monism  by  the  analysis  of 
what  interaction  involves,  55.  Vicious  intellectualism  defined,  60. 
Royce’s  alternative:  either  the  complete  disunion  or  the  absolute 
union  of  things,  61.  Bradley’s  dialectic  difficulties  with  relations,  69. 
Inefficiency  of  the  Absolute  as  a rationalizing  remedy,  71.  Tend- 
ency of  Rationalists  to  fly  to  extremes,  74.  The  question  of  ‘ exter- 
nal’ relations,  79.  Transition  to  Hegel,  91. 


LECTURE  II 


Monistic  Idealism 


41 


in 


CONTENTS 


LECTURE  III 

Hegel  and  his  Method 83 

Hegel’s  influence.  85.  The  type  of  his  vision  is  impressionistic,  87. 
The  ‘dialectic’  element  in  reality,  88.  Pluralism  involves  possible 
conflicts  among  things,  90.  Hegel  explains  conflicts  by  the  mutual 
contradictoriness  of  concepts,  91.  Criticism  of  his  attempt  to  tran- 
scend ordinary  logic,  92.  Examples  of  the  ‘dialectic’  constitution  of 
things,  95.  The  rationalistic  ideal:  propositions  self-securing  by 
means  of  double  negation,  101.  Sublimity  of  the  conception,  104. 
Criticism  of  Hegel’s  account:  it  involves  vicious  intellectualism,  105. 
Hegel  is  a seer  rather  than  a reasoner,  107.  ‘The  Absolute’  and 
‘God’  are  two  different  notions,  110.  Utility  of  the  Absolute  in  con- 
ferring mental  peace,  114.  But  this  is  counterbalanced  by  the  pe- 
culiar paradoxes  which  it  introduces  into  philosophy,  116.  Leibnitz 
and  Lotze  on  the  ‘fall’  involved  in  the  creation  of  the  finite,  119. 
Joachim  on  the  fall  of  truth  into  error,  121.  The  world  of  the  abso- 
lutist cannot  be  perfect,  123.  Pluralistic  conclusions,  125. 

LECTURE  IV 

Concerning  Fechner  131 

Superhuman  consciousness  does  not  necessarily  imply  an  abso- 
lute mind,  134.  Thinness  of  contemporary  absolutism,  135.  The 
tone  of  Fechner’s  empiricist  pantheism  contrasted  with  that  of  the 
rationalistic  sort,  144.  Fechner’s  life,  145.  His  vision,  the  ‘daylight 
view,’  150.  His  way  of  reasoning  by  analogy,  151.  The  whole  uni- 
verse animated,  152.  His  monistic  formula  is  unessential,  153.  The 
Earth-Soul,  156.  Its  differences  from  our  souls,  160.  The  earth  as 
an  angel,  164.  The  Plant-Soul,  165.  The  logic  used  by  Fechner, 
168.  His  theory  of  immortality,  170.  The ‘thickness’ of  his  imagi- 
nation, 173.  Inferiority  of  the  ordinary  transcendentalist  pantheism, 
to  his  vision,  174. 


LECTURE  V 

The  Compounding  of  Consciousness 179 

The  assumption  that  states  of  mind  may  compound  themselves, 
181.  This  assumption  is  held  in  common  by  naturalistic  psycho- 


IV 


CONTENTS 


logy,  by  transcendental  idealism,  and  by  Fechner,  184.  Criticism  of 
it  by  the  present  writer  in  a former  book,  188.  Physical  combina- 
tions, so-called,  cannot  be  invoked  as  aralogous,  194.  Nevertheless, 
combination  must  be  postulated  among  the  parts  of  the  Universe, 
197.  The  logical  objections  to  admitting  it,  198.  Rationalistic  treat- 
ment of  the  question  brings  us  to  an  impasse,  208.  A radical  breach 
with  intellectualism  is  required,  212.  Transition  to  Bergson’s  philo- 
sophy, 214.  Abusive  use  of  concepts,  219. 


Bergson  and  his  Critique  of  Intellectualism  . 223 

Professor  Bergson’s  personality,  225.  Achilles  and  the  tortoise, 
228.  Not  a sophism,  229.  We  make  motion  unintelligible  when  we 
treat  it  by  static  concepts,  233.  Conceptual  treatment  is  neverthe- 
less of  immense  practical  use,  235.  The  traditional  rationalism  gives 
an  essentially  static  universe,  237.  Intolerableness  of  the  intellect- 
ualist  view,  240.  No  rationalist  account  is  possible  of  action,  change, 
or  immediate  life,  244.  The  function  of  concepts  is  practical  rather 
than  theoretical,  247.  Bergson  remands  us  to  intuition  or  sensational 
experience  for  the  understanding  of  how  life  makes  itself  go,  252. 
What  Bergson  means  by  this,  255.  Manyness  in  oneness  must  be 
admitted,  256.  What  really  exists  is  not  things  made,  but  things  in 
the  making,  263.  Bergson’s  originality,  264.  Impotence  of  intelleet- 
ualist  logic  to  define  a universe  where  change  is  continuous,  267. 
Livingly,  things  are  their  own  others,  so  that  there  is  a sense  in 
which  Hegel’s  logic  is  true,  270. 


Green’s  critique  of  Sensationalism,  278.  Relations  are  as  imme- 
diately felt  as  terms  are,  280.  The  union  of  things  is  given  in  the 
immediate  flux,  not  in  any  conceptual  reason  that  overcomes  the 
flux’s  aboriginal  incoherence,  282.  The  minima  of  experience  as 
vehicles  of  continuity,  284.  Fallacy  of  the  objections  to  self-com- 
pounding, 286.  The  concrete  units  of  experience  are ‘their  own 
others,’  287.  Reality  is  confluent  from  next  to  next,  290.  Intellect- 
ualism must  be  sincerely  renounced,  291.  The  Absolute  is  only 


LECTURE  VI 


LECTURE  VII 


The  Continuity  of  Experience 


275 


v 


CONTENTS 


an  hypothesis,  292.  Fechner’s  God  is  not  the  Absolute,  293.  The 
Absolute  solves  no  intellectualist  difficulty,  296.  Does  superhuman 
consciousness  probably  i xist  ? 298. 

LECTURE  VIII 

Conclusions 301 

Specifically  religious  experiences  occur,  303.  Their  nature,  304. 
They  corroborate  the  notion  of  a larger  life  of  which  we  are  a part, 
308.  This  life  must  be  finite  if  we  are  to  escape  the  paradoxes  of 
monism,  310.  God  as  a finite  being,  311.  Empiricism  is  a better 
ally  than  rationalism,  of  religion,  313.  Empirical  proofs  of  larger 
mind  may  open  the  door  to  superstitions,  315.  But  this  objection 
should  not  be  deemed  fatal,  316.  Our  beliefs  form  parts  of  reality, 
317.  In  pluralistic  empiricism  our  relation  to  God  remains  least 
foreign,  318.  The  word  ‘rationality’  had  better  be  replaced  by  the 
word  ‘intimacy,’  319.  Monism  and  pluralism  distinguished  and 
defined,  321.  Pluralism  involves  indeterminism,  324.  All  men  use 
the ‘faith -ladder’  in  reaching  their  decision,  328.  Conclusion,  330. 


NOTES 333 

APPENDICES 

A.  The  Thing  and  its  Relations 347 

B.  The  Experience  of  Activity 370 

C.  On  the  Notion  of  Reality  as  Changing  . . . 395 


INDEX 


401 


I 


THE  TYPES  OF  PHILOSOPHIC 
THINKING 


LECTURE  I 


THE  TYPES  OF  PHILOSOPHIC 
THINKING 

As  these  lectures  are  meant  to  be  public,  and 
so  few,  I have  assumed  all  very  special  prob- 
lems to  be  excluded,  and  some  topic  of  general 
interest  required.  Fortunately,  our  age  seems 
to  be  growing  philosophical  again  — still  in 
the  ashes  live  the  wonted  fires.  Oxford,  long 
the  seed-bed,  for  the  english  world,  of  the 
idealism  inspired  by  Kant  and  Hegel,  has  re- 
cently become  the  nursery  of  a very  different 
way  of  thinking.  Even  non-philosophers  have 
begun  to  take  an  interest  in  a controversy  over 
what  is  known  as  pluralism  or  humanism.  It 
looks  a little  as  if  the  ancient  english  empiri- 
cism, so  long  put  out  of  fashion  here  by  nobler 
sounding  germanic  formulas,  might  be  re- 
pluming itself  and  getting  ready  for  a stronger 
flight  than  ever.  It  looks  as  if  foundations 
were  being  sounded  and  examined  afresh. 

Individuality  outruns  all  classification,  yet 
we  insist  on  classifying  every  one  we  meet 

3 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


under  some  general  head.  As  these  heads  usu- 
ally suggest  prejudicial  associations  to  some 
hearer  or  other,  the  life  of  philosophy  largely 
consists  of  resentments  at  the  classing,  and 
complaints  of  being  misunderstood.  But  there 
are  signs  of  clearing  up,  and,  on  the  whole,  less 
acrimony  in  discussion,  for  which  both  Oxford 
and  Harvard  are  partly  to  be  thanked.  As 
I look  back  into  the  sixties,  Mill,  Bain,  and 
Hamilton  were  the  only  official  philosophers 
in  Britain.  Spencer,  Martineau,  and  Hodgson 
were  just  beginning.  In  France,  the  pupils  of 
Cousin  were  delving  into  history  only,  and 
Renouvier  alone  had  an  original  system.  In 
Germany,  the  hegelian  impetus  had  spent  it- 
self, and,  apart  from  historical  scholarship, 
nothing  but  the  materialistic  controversy  re- 
mained, with  such  men  as  Buchner  and  Ulrici 
as  its  champions.  Lotze  and  Fechner  were  the 
sole  original  thinkers,  and  Fechner  was  not  a 
professional  philosopher  at  all. 

The  general  impression  made  was  of  crude 
issues  and  oppositions,  of  small  subtlety  and 
of  a widely  spread  ignorance.  Amateurishness 

4 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 


was  rampant.  Samuel  Bailey’s  ‘ letters  on  the 
philosophy  of  the  human  mind,’  published  in 
1855,  are  one  of  the  ablest  expressions  of  eng- 
lish  associationism,  and  a book  of  real  power. 
Yet  hear  how  he  writes  of  Kant : ‘No  one,  after 
reading  the  extracts,  etc.,  can  be  surprised  to 
hear  of  a declaration  by  men  of  eminent  abili- 
ties, that,  after  years  of  study,  they  had  not 
succeeded  in  gathering  one  clear  idea  from  the 
speculations  of  Kant.  I should  have  been  al- 
most surprised  if  they  had.  In  or  about  1818, 
Lord  Grenville,  when  visiting  the  Lakes  of 
England,  observed  to  Professor  Wilson  that, 
after  five  years’  study  of  Kant’s  philosophy,  he 
had  not  gathered  from  it  one  clear  idea.  Wil- 
berforce,  about  the  same  time,  made  the  same 
confession  to  another  friend  of  my  own.  “ I am 
endeavoring,”  exclaims  Sir  James  Mackintosh, 
in  the  irritation,  evidently,  of  baffled  efforts, 
“to  understand  this  accursed  german  philo- 
sophy.” ’ 1 

What  Oxford  thinker  would  dare  to  print 
such  naif  and  provincial-sounding  citations  of 
authority  to-day  ? 


5 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


The  torch  of  learning  passes  from  land  to 
land  as  the  spirit  bloweth  the  flame.  The  deep- 
ening of  philosophic  consciousness  came  to  us 
english  folk  from  Germany,  as  it  will  probably 
pass  back  ere  long.  Ferrier,  J.  H.  Stirling,  and, 
most  of  all,  T.  H.  Green  are  to  be  thanked. 
If  asked  to  tell  in  broad  strokes  what  the 
main  doctrinal  change  has  been,  I should  call 
it  a change  from  the  crudity  of  the  older  eng- 
lish thinking,  its  ultra-simplicity  of  mind,  both 
when  it  was  religious  and  when  it  was  anti- 
religious,  toward  a rationalism  derived  in  the 
first  instance  from  Germany,  but  relieved  from 
german  technicality  and  shrillness,  and  content 
to  suggest,  and  to  remain  vague,  and  to  be,  in 
the  english  fashion,  devout. 

By  the  time  T.  H.  Green  began  at  Oxford, 
the  generation  seemed  to  feel  as  if  it  had  fed  on 
the  chopped  straw  of  psychology  and  of  asso- 
^iationism  long  enough,  and  as  if  a little  vast- 
ness, even  though  it  went  with  vagueness,  as  of 
some  moist  wind  from  far  away,  reminding  us 
of  our  pre-natal  sublimity,  would  be  welcome. 

Green’s  great  point  of  attack  was  the  dis- 
6 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 


connectedness  of  the  reigning  english  sensa- 
tionalism. Relating  was  the  great  intellectual 
activity  for  him,  and  the  key  to  this  relating 
was  believed  by  him  to  lodge  itself  at  last  in 
what  most  of  you  know  as  Kant’s  unity  of 
apperception,  transformed  into  a living  spirit 
of  the  world. 

Hence  a monism  of  a devout  kind.  In  some 
way  we  must  be  fallen  angels,  one  with  intel- 
ligence as  such ; and  a great  disdain  for  empiri- 
cism of  the  sensationalist  sort  has  always  char- 
acterized this  school  of  thought,  which,  on  the 
whole,  has  reigned  supreme  at  Oxford  and  in 
the  Scottish  universities  until  the  present  day. 

But  now  there  are  signs  of  its  giving  way  to 
a wave  of  revised  empiricism.  I confess  that  1 
should  be  glad  to  see  this  latest  wave  prevail ; 
so  — the  sooner  I am  frank  about  it  the  better 
— I hope  to  have  my  voice  counted  in  its  favor 
as  one  of  the  results  of  this  lecture-course. 

What  do  the  terms  empiricism  and  ration- 
alism mean  ? Reduced  to  their  most  preg- 
nant difference,  empiricism  means  the  habit  of 
explaining  wholes  by  parts,  and  rationalism 

7 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

means  the  habit  of  explaining  parts  by  wholes. 
Rationalism  thus  preserves  affinities  with  mo- 
nism, since  wholeness  goes  with  union,  while 
empiricism  inclines  to  pluralistic  views.  No 
philosophy  can  ever  be  anything  but  a sum- 
mary sketch,  a picture  of  the  world  in  abridg- 
ment, a foreshortened  bird’s-eye  view  of  the 
perspective  of  events.  And  the  first  thing  to 
notice  is  this,  that  the  only  material  we  have 
at  our  disposal  for  making  a picture  of  the 
whole  world  is  supplied  by  the  various  portions 
of  that  world  of  which  we  have  already  had 
experience.  We  can  invent  no  new  forms  of 
conception,  applicable  to  the  whole  exclusively, 
and  not  suggested  originally  by  the  parts.  All 
philosophers,  accordingly,  have  conceived  of 
the  whole  world  after  the  analogy  of  some 
particular  feature  of  it  which  has  particularly 
captivated  their  attention.  Thus,  the  theists 
take  their  cue  from  manufacture,  the  panthe- 
ists from  growth.  For  one  man,  the  world  is 
like  a thought  or  a grammatical  sentence  in 
which  a thought  is  expressed.  For  such  a phi- 
losopher, the  whole  must  logically  be  prior  to 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 


the  parts ; for  letters  would  never  have  been 
invented  without  syllables  to  spell,  or  syllables 
without  words  to  utter. 

Another  man,  struck  by  the  disconnected- 
ness and  mutual  accidentality  of  so  many  of  the 
world’s  details,  takes  the  universe  as  a whole 
to  have  been  such  a disconnectedness  origi- 
nally, and  supposes  order  to  have  been  superin- 
duced upon  it  in  the  second  instance,  possibly 
by  attrition  and  the  gradual  wearing  away  by 
internal  friction  of  portions  that  originally 
interfered. 

Another  will  conceive  the  order  as  only  a 
statistical  appearance,  and  the  universe  will  be 
for  him  like  a vast  grab-bag  with  black  and 
white  balls  in  it,  of  which  we  guess  the  quan- 
tities only  probably,  by  the  frequency  with 
which  we  experience  their  egress. 

For  another,  again,  there  is  no  really  inher- 
ent order,  but  it  is  we  who  project  order  into  the 
world  by  selecting  objects  and  tracing  relations 
so  as  to  gratify  our  intellectual  interests.  We 
carve  out  order  by  leaving  the  disorderly  parts 

out ; and  the  world  is  conceived  thus  after  the 

9 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

analogy  of  a forest  or  a block  of  marble  from 
which  parks  or  statues  may  be  produced  by 
eliminating  irrelevant  trees  or  chips  of  stone. 

Some  thinkers  follow  suggestions  from  hu- 
man life,  and  treat  the  universe  as  if  it  were 
essentially  a place  in  which  ideals  are  realized. 
Others  are  more  struck  by  its  lower  features, 
and  for  them,  brute  necessities  express  its 
character  better. 

All  follow  one  analogy  or  another;  and  all 
the  analogies  are  with  some  one  or  other  of  the 
universe’s  subdivisions.  Every  one  is  neverthe- 
less prone  to  claim  that  his  conclusions  are 
the  only  logical  ones,  that  they  are  necessities 
of  universal  reason,  they  being  all  the  while, 
at  bottom,  accidents  more  or  less  of  personal 
vision  which  had  far  better  be  avowed  as  such ; 
for  one  man’s  vision  may  be  much  more  valu- 
able than  another’s,  and  our  visions  are  usually 
not  only  our  most  interesting  but  our  most  re- 
spectable contributions  to  the  world  in  which 
we  play  our  part.  What  was  reason  given  to 
men  for,  said  some  eighteenth  century  writer, 
except  to  enable  them  to  find  reasons  for  what 

10 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 


they  want  to  think  and  do  ? — and  I think  the 
history  of  philosophy  largely  bears  him  out. 
‘The  aim  of  knowledge,’  says  Hegel,2  ‘is  to 
divest  the  objective  world  of  its  strangeness, 
and  to  make  us  more  at  home  in  it.’  Different 
men  find  their  minds  more  at  home  in  very 
different  fragments  of  the  world. 

Let  me  make  a few  comments,  here,  on  the 
curious  antipathies  which  these  partialities 
arouse.  They  are  sovereignly  unjust,  for  all  the 
parties  are  human  beings  with  the  same  essen- 
tial interests,  and  no  one  of  them  is  the  wdiolly 
perverse  demon  which  another  often  imagines 
him  to  be.  Both  are  loyal  to  the  world  that 
bears  them ; neither  wishes  to  spoil  it ; neither 
wishes  to  regard  it  as  an  insane  incoherence; 
both  want  to  keep  it  as  a universe  of  some  kind ; 
and  their  differences  are  all  secondary  to  this 
deep  agreement.  They  may  be  only  propensi- 
ties to  emphasize  differently.  Or  one  man  may 
care  for  finality  and  security  more  than  the 
other.  Or  their  tastes  in  language  may  be  dif- 
ferent. One  may  like  a universe  that  lends  itself 
to  lofty  and  exalted  characterization.  To  an- 
il 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


other  this  may  seem  sentimental  or  rhetorical. 
One  may  wish  for  the  right  to  use  a clerical 
vocabulary,  another  a technical  or  professorial 
one.  A certain  old  farmer  of  my  acquaintance 
in  America  was  called  a rascal  by  one  of  his 
neighbors.  He  immediately  smote  the  man, 
saying,  ‘ I won’t  stand  none  of  your  diminutive 
epithets.’  Empiricist  minds,  putting  the  parts 
before  the  whole,  appear  to  rationalists,  who 
start  from  the  whole,  and  consequently  enjoy 
magniloquent  privileges,  to  use  epithets  offen- 
sively diminutive.  But  all  such  differences  are 
minor  matters  which  ought  to  be  subordinated 
in  view  of  the  fact  that,  whether  we  be  empiri- 
cists or  rationalists,  we  are,  ourselves,  parts 
of  the  universe  and  share  the  same  one  deep 
concern  in  its  destinies.  We  crave  alike  to 
feel  more  truly  at  home  with  it,  and  to  contrib- 
ute our  mite  to  its  amelioration.  It  would  be 
pitiful  if  small  aesthetic  discords  were  to  keep 
honest  men  asunder. 

I shall  myself  have  use  for  the  diminutive 
epithets  of  empiricism.  But  if  you  look  behind 
the  words  at  the  spirit,  I am  sure  you  will  not 

12 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 


find  it  matricidal.  I am  as  good  a son  as  any 
rationalist  among  you  to  our  common  mother. 

What  troubles  me  more  than  this  misappre- 
hension is  the  genuine  abstruseness  of  many 
of  the  matters  I shall  be  obliged  to  talk  about, 
and  the  difficulty  of  making  them  intelligible  at 
one  hearing.  But  there  are  two  pieces,  ‘zwei 
stiicke,’  as  Kant  would  have  said,  in  every 
philosophy  — the  final  outlook,  belief,  or  atti- 
tude to  which  it  brings  us,  and  the  reasonings 
by  which  that  attitude  is  reached  and  mediated. 
A philosophy,  as  James  Ferrier  used  to  tell  us, 
must  indeed  be  true,  but  that  is  the  least  of 
its  requirements.  One  may  be  true  without 
being  a philosopher,  true  by  guessw'ork  or  by 
revelation.  What  distinguishes  a philosopher’s 
truth  is  that  it  is  reasoned.  Argument,  not  sup- 
position, must  have  put  it  in  his  possession. 
Common  men  find  themselves  inheriting  their 
beliefs,  they  know  not  how.  They  jump  into 
them  with  both  feet,  and  stand  there.  Philoso- 
phers must  do  more ; they  must  first  get  reason’s 
license  for  them ; and  to  the  professional  phi- 
losophic mind  the  operation  of  procuring  the 

13 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

license  is  usually  a thing  of  much  more  pith  and 
moment  than  any  particular  beliefs  to  which 
the  license  may  give  the  rights  of  access.  Sup- 
pose, for  example,  that  a philosopher  believes 
in  what  is  called  free-will.  That  a common 
man  alongside  of  him  should  also  share  that 
belief,  possessing  it  by  a sort  of  inborn  intuition, 
does  not  endear  the  man  to  the  philosopher  at 
all  — he  may  even  be  ashamed  to  be  associated 
with  such  a man.  What  interests  the  philoso- 
pher is  the  particular  premises  on  which  the 
free-will  he  believes  in  is  established,  the  sense 
in  which  it  is  taken,  the  objections  it  eludes, 
the  difficulties  it  takes  account  of,  in  short  the 
whole  form  and  temper  and  manner  and  tech- 
nical apparatus  that  goes  with  the  belief  in 
question.  A philosopher  across  the  way  who 
should  use  the  same  technical  apparatus,  mak- 
ing the  same  distinctions,  etc.,  but  drawing  op- 
posite conclusions  and  denying  free-will  entirely, 
would  fascinate  the  first  philosopher  far  more 
than  would  the  naif  co-believer.  Their  com- 
mon technical  interests  would  unite  them  more 
than  their  opposite  conclusions  separate  them. 

14 


I THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 


Each  would  feel  an  essential  consanguinity  in 
the  other,  would  think  of  him,  write  at  him, 
care  for  his  good  opinion.  The  simple-minded 
believer  in  free-will  would  be  disregarded  by 
either.  Neither  as  ally  nor  as  opponent  would 
his  vote  be  counted. 

In  a measure  this  is  doubtless  as  it  should  be, 
but  like  all  professionalism  it  can  go  to  abusive 
extremes.  The  end  is  after  all  more  than  the 
way,  in  most  things  human,  and  forms  and 
methods  may  easily  frustrate  their  own  pur- 
pose. The  abuse  of  technicality  is  seen  in  the 
infrequency  with  which,  in  philosophical  litera- 
ture, metaphysical  questions  are  discussed  di- 
rectly and  on  their  own  merits.  Almost  always 
they  are  handled  as  if  through  a heavy  woolen 
curtain,  the  veil  of  previous  philosophers’ 
opinions.  Alternatives  are  wrapped  in  proper 
names,  as  if  it  were  indecent  for  a truth  to 
go  naked.  The  late  Professor  John  Grote  of 
Cambridge  has  some  good  remarks  about  this. 
‘ Thought,’  he  says,  ‘ is  not  a professional  mat- 
ter, not  something  for  so-called  philosophers 
only  or  for  professed  thinkers.  The  best  phi- 

15 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

losopher  is  the  man  who  can  think  most  simply. 

. . . I wish  that  people  would  consider  that 
thought  — and  philosophy  is  no  more  than 
good  and  methodical  thought  — is  a matter  inti- 
mate to  them,  a portion  of  their  real  selves  . . . 
that  they  would  value  what  they  think,  and  be 
interested  in  it.  . . . In  my  own  opinion,’  he 
goes  on,  ‘ there  is  something  depressing  in  this 
weight  of  learning,  with  nothing  that  can  come 
into  one’s  mind  but  one  is  told.  Oh,  that  is  the 
opinion  of  such  and  such  a person  long  ago. 
...  I can  conceive  of  nothing  more  noxious 
for  students  than  to  get  into  the  habit  of  saying 
to  themselves  about  their  ordinary  philosophic 
thought,  Oh,  somebody  must  have  thought  it 
all  before.’ 8 Yet  this  is  the  habit  most  en- 
couraged at  our  seats  of  learning.  You  must 
tie  your  opinion  to  Aristotle’s  or  Spinoza’s; 
you  must  define  it  by  its  distance  from  Kant’s ; 
you  must  refute  your  rival’s  view  by  identifying 
it  with  Protagoras’s.  Thus  does  all  spontane- 
ity of  thought,  all  freshness  of  conception,  get 
destroyed.  Everything  you  touch  is  shopwTorn. 
The  over-technicality  and  consequent  dreari- 

16 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 


ness  of  the  younger  disciples  at  our  american 
universities  is  appalling.  It  comes  from  too 
much  following  of  german  models  and  man- 
ners. Let  me  fervently  express  the  hope  that 
in  this  country  you  will  hark  back  to  the  more 
humane  english  tradition.  American  students 
have  to  regain  direct  relations  with  our  subject 
by  painful  individual  effort  in  later  life.  Some 
of  us  have  done  so.  Some  of  the  younger  ones, 
I fear,  never  will,  so  strong  are  the  professional 
shop-habits  already. 

In  a subject  like  philosophy  it  is  really  fatal 
to  lose  connexion  with  the  open  air  of  human 
nature,  and  to  think  in  terms  of  shop-tradi- 
tion only.  In  Germany  the  forms  are  so  pro- 
fessionalized that  anybody  who  has  gained  a 
teaching  chair  and  written  a book,  however 
distorted  and  eccentric,  has  the  legal  right  to 
figure  forever  in  the  history  of  the  subject  like 
a fly  in  amber.  All  later  comers  have  the  duty 
of  quoting  him  and  measuring  their  opinions 
with  his  opinion.  Such  are  the  rules  of  the  pro- 
fessorial game  — they  think  and  write  from 
each  other  and  for  each  other  and  at  each  other 

17 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

exclusively.  With  this  exclusion  of  the  open 
air  all  true  perspective  gets  lost,  extremes  and 
oddities  count  as  much  as  sanities,  and  com- 
mand the  same  attention ; and  if  by  chance  any 
one  writes  popularly  and  about  results  only, 
with  his  mind  directly  focussed  on  the  subject, 
it  is  reckoned  oberflachliches  zeug  and  ganz 
unwissenschaftlich.  Professor  Paulsen  has 
recently  written  some  feeling  lines  about  this 
over-professionalism,  from  the  reign  of  which 
in  Germany  his  own  writings,  which  sin  by 
being  ‘ literary,’  have  suffered  loss  of  credit. 
Philosophy,  he  says,  has  long  assumed  in  Ger- 
many the  character  of  being  an  esoteric  and 
occult  science.  There  is  a genuine  fear  of  popu- 
larity. Simplicity  of  statement  is  deemed  syn- 
onymous with  hollowness  and  shallowness.  He 
recalls  an  old  professor  saying  to  him  once : 
‘ Yes,  we  philosophers,  whenever  we  wish,  can 
go  so  far  that  in  a couple  of  sentences  we  can 
put  ourselves  where  nobody  can  follow  us.’ 
The  professor  said  this  with  conscious  pride, 
but  he  ought  to  have  been  ashamed  of  it.  Great 
as  technique  is,  results  are  greater.  To  teach 

18 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 

philosophy  so  that  the  pupils’  interest  in  tech- 
nique exceeds  that  in  results  is  surely  a vicious 
aberration.  It  is  bad  form,  not  good  form,  in 
a discipline  of  such  universal  human  interest. 
Moreover,  technique  for  technique,  does  n’t 
David  Hume’s  technique  set,  after  all,  the  kind 
of  pattern  most  difficult  to  follow  ? Is  n’t  it  the 
most  admirable  ? The  english  mind,  thank 
heaven,  and  the  french  mind,  are  still  kept,  by 
their  aversion  to  crude  technique  and  barba- 
rism, closer  to  truth’s  natural  probabilities. 
Their  literatures  show  fewer  obvious  falsities 
and  monstrosities  than  that  of  Germany. 
Think  of  the  german  literature  of  sesthetics, 
with  the  preposterousness  of  such  an  unaesthetic 
personage  as  Immanuel  Kant  enthroned  in  its 
centre ! Think  of  german  books  on  religions- 
'philosophie,  with  the  heart’s  battles  translated 
into  conceptual  jargon  and  made  dialectic. 
The  most  persistent  setter  of  questions,  feeler 
of  objections,  insister  on  satisfactions,  is  the  re- 
ligious life.  Yet  all  its  troubles  can  be  treated 
with  absurdly  little  technicality.  The  wonder 
is  that,  with  their  way  of  working  philosophy, 

19 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


individual  Germans  should  preserve  any  spon- 
taneity of  mind  at  all.  That  they  still  mani- 
fest freshness  and  originality  in  so  eminent  a 
degree,  proves  the  indestructible  richness  of 
the  german  cerebral  endowment. 

Let  me  repeat  once  more  that  a man’s 
vision  is  the  great  fact  about  him.  Who  cares 
for  Carlyle’s  reasons,  or  Schopenhauer’s,  or 
Spencer’s  ? A philosophy  is  the  expression  of  a 
man’s  intimate  character,  and  all  definitions  of 
the  universe  are  but  the  deliberately  adopted 
reactions  of  human  characters  upon  it.  In  the 
recent  book  from  which  I quoted  the  words  of 
Professor  Paulsen,  a book  of  successive  chap- 
ters by  various  living  german  philosophers,3 
we  pass  from  one  idiosyncratic  personal  at- 
mosphere into  another  almost  as  if  we  were 
turning  over  a photograph  album. 

If  we  take  the  whole  history  of  philosophy, 
the  systems  reduce  themselves  to  a few  main 
types  which,  under  all  the  technical  verbiage  in 
which  the  ingenious  intellect  of  man  envelops 
them,  are  just  so  many  visions,  modes  of  feeling 
the  whole  push,  and  seeing  the  whole  drift  of 

20 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 

life,  forced  on  one  by  one’s  total  character  and 
experience,  and  on  the  whole  'preferred  — there 
is  no  other  truthful  word  — as  one’s  best  work- 
ing attitude.  Cynical  characters  take  one  gen- 
eral attitude,  sympathetic  characters  another. 
But  no  general  attitude  is  possible  towards  the 
world  as  a whole,  until  the  intellect  has  de- 
veloped considerable  generalizing  power  and 
learned  to  take  pleasure  in  synthetic  formulas. 
The  thought  of  very  primitive  men  has  hardly 
any  tincture  of  philosophy.  Nature  can  have 
little  unity  for  savages.  It  is  a Walpurgis-nacht 
procession,  a checkered  play  of  light  and 
shadow,  a medley  of  impish  and  elfish  friendly 
and  inimical  powers.  ‘ Close  to  nature’  though 
they  live,  they  are  anything  but  Words  worth- 
ians.  If  a bit  of  cosmic  emotion  ever  thrills 
them,  it  is  likely  to  be  at  midnight,  when  the 
camp  smoke  rises  straight  to  the  wicked  full 
moon  in  the  zenith,  and  the  forest  is  all  whis- 
pering with  witchery  and  danger.  The  eeriness 
of  the  world,  the  mischief  and  the  manyness, 
the  littleness  of  the  forces,  the  magical  sur- 
prises, the  unaccountability  of  every  agent, 

21 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


these  surely  are  the  characters  most  impressive 
at  that  stage  of  culture,  these  communicate  the 
thrills  of  curiosity  and  the  earliest  intellectual 
stirrings.  Tempests  and  conflagrations,  pesti- 
lences and  earthquakes,  reveal  supramundane 
powers,  and  instigate  religious  terror  rather 
than  philosophy.  Nature,  more  demonic  than 
divine,  is  above  all  things  multifarious.  So 
many  creatures  that  feed  or  threaten,  that  help 
or  crush,  so  many  beings  to  hate  or  love,  to 
understand  or  start  at  — which  is  on  top  and 
which  subordinate  ? Who  can  tell  ? They  are 
co-ordinate,  rather,  and  to  adapt  ourselves  to 
them  singly,  to  ‘square’  the  dangerous  powers 
and  keep  the  others  friendly,  regardless  of  con- 
sistency or  unity,  is  the  chief  problem.  The 
symbol  of  nature  at  this  stage,  as  Paulsen  well 
says,  is  the  sphinx,  under  wdiose  nourishing 
breasts  the  tearing  claws  are  visible. 

But  in  due  course  of  time  the  intellect  awoke, 
with  its  passion  for  generalizing,  simplifying, 
and  subordinating,  and  then  began  those  diver- 
gences of  conception  which  all  later  experience 
seems  rather  to  have  deepened  than  to  have 

22 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 

effaced,  because  objective  nature  has  con- 
tributed to  both  sides  impartially,  and  has 
let  the  thinkers  emphasize  different  parts  of 
her,  and  pile  up  opposite  imaginary  supple- 
ments. 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting  opposition  is 
that  which  results  from  the  clash  between  what 
I lately  called  the  sympathetic  and  the  cynical 
temper.  Materialistic  and  spiritualistic  phi- 
losophies are  the  rival  types  that  result:  the 
former  defining  the  world  so  as  to  leave  man’s 
soul  upon  it  as  a sort  of  outside  passenger  or 
alien,  while  the  latter  insists  that  the  intimate 
and  human  must  surround  and  underlie  the 
brutal.  This  latter  is  the  spiritual  way  of 
thinking. 

Now  there  are  two  very  distinct  types  or 
stages  in  spiritualistic  philosophy,  and  my  next 
purpose  in  this  lecture  is  to  make  their  contrast 
evident.  Both  types  attain  the  sought-for  in- 
timacy of  view,  but  the  one  attains  it  some- 
what less  successfully  than  the  other. 

The  generic  term  spiritualism,  which  I began 
by  using  merely  as  the  opposite  of  materialism, 

23 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


thus  subdivides  into  two  species,  the  more  inti- 
mate one  of  which  is  monistic  and  the  less  in- 
timate dualistic.  The  dualistic  species  is  the 
theism  that  reached  its  elaboration  in  the  scho- 
lastic philosophy,  while  the  monistic  species  is 
the  'pantheism  spoken  of  sometimes  simply  as 
idealism,  and  sometimes  as  ‘post-kantian’  or 
‘absolute’  idealism.  Dualistic  theism  is  pro- 
fessed as  firmly  as  ever  at  all  catholic  seats  of 
learning,  whereas  it  has  of  late  years  tended  to 
disappear  at  our  british  and  american  univer- 
sities, and  to  be  replaced  by  a monistic  pan- 
theism more  or  less  open  or  disguised.  I have 
an  impression  that  ever  since  T.  H.  Green’s 
time  absolute  idealism  has  been  decidedly  in 
the  ascendent  at  Oxford.  It  is  in  the  ascendent 
at  my  own  university  of  Harvard. 

Absolute  idealism  attains,  I said,  to  the  more 
intimate  point  of  view ; but  the  statement  needs 
some  explanation.  So  far  as  theism  represents 
the  world  as  God’s  world,  and  God  as  what 
Matthew  Arnold  called  a magnified  non-nat- 
ural man,  it  would  seem  as  if  the  inner  quality 
of  the  world  remained  human,  and  as  if  our 


24 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 

relations  with  it  might  be  intimate  enough — for 
what  is  best  in  ourselves  appears  then  also  out- 
side of  ourselves,  and  we  and  the  universe  are 
of  the  same  spiritual  species.  So  far,  so  good, 
then;  and  one  might  consequently  ask,  What 
more  of  intimacy  do  you  require  ? To  which 
the  answer  is  that  to  be  like  a thing  is  not  as 
intimate  a relation  as  to  be  substantially  fused 
into  it,  to  form  one  continuous  soul  and  body 
with  it ; and  that  pantheistic  idealism,  making 
us  entitatively  one  with  God,  attains  this  higher 
reach  of  intimacy. 

The  theistic  conception,  picturing  God  and 
his  creation  as  entities  distinct  from  each 
other,  still  leaves  the  human  subject  outside 
of  the  deepest  reality  in  the  universe.  God  is 
from  eternity  complete,  it  says,  and  sufficient 
unto  himself ; he  throws  off  the  world  by  a free 
act  and  as  an  extraneous  substance,  and  he 
throws  off  man  as  a third  substance,  extrane- 
ous to  both  the  world  and  himself.  Between 
them,  God  says  ‘ one/  the  world  says  ‘ twro,’ 
and  man  says  ‘ three,’  — that  is  the  orthodox 
theistic  view.  And  orthodox  theism  has  been 

25 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


so  jealous  of  God’s  glory  that  it  has  taken  pains 
to  exaggerate  everything  in  the  notion  of  him 
that  could  make  for  isolation  and  separateness. 
Page  upon  page  in  scholastic  books  go  to  prove 
that  God  is  in  no  sense  implicated  by  his  crea- 
tive act,  or  involved  in  his  creation.  That  his 
relation  to  the  creatures  he  has  made  should 
make  any  difference  to  him,  carry  any  conse- 
quence, or  qualify  his  being,  is  repudiated  as 
a pantheistic  slur  upon  his  self-sufficingness.  I 
said  a moment  ago  that  theism  treats  us  and 
God  as  of  the  same  species,  but  from  the  ortho- 
dox point  of  view  that  was  a slip  of  language. 
God  and  his  creatures  are  toto  genere  distinct 
in  the  scholastic  theology,  they  have  absolutely 
nothing  in  common;  nay,  it  degrades  God  to 
attribute  to  him  any  generic  nature  whatever ; 
he  can  be  classed  with  nothing.  There  is  a 
sense,  then,  in  which  philosophic  theism  makes 
us  outsiders  and  keeps  us  foreigners  in  relation 
to  God,  in  which,  at  any  rate,  his  connexion 
with  us  appears  as  unilateral  and  not  recip- 
rocal. His  action  can  affect  us,  but  he  can  never 
be  affected  by  our  reaction.  Our  relation,  in 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 

short,  is  not  a strictly  social  relation.  Of  course 
in  common  men’s  religion  the  relation  is  be- 
lieved to  be  social,  but  that  is  only  one  of  the 
many  differences  between  religion  and  theology. 

This  essential  dualism  of  the  theistic  view 
has  all  sorts  of  collateral  consequences.  Man 
being  an  outsider  and  a mere  subject  to  God, 
not  his  intimate  partner,  a character  of  exter- 
nality invades  the  field.  God  is  not  heart  of 
our  heart  and  reason  of  our  reason,  but  our 
magistrate,  rather;  and  mechanically  to  obey 
his  commands,  however  strange  they  may  be, 
remains  our  only  moral  duty.  Conceptions  of 
criminal  law  have  in  fact  played  a great  part  in 
defining  our  relations  with  him.  Our  relations 
with  speculative  truth  show  the  same  exter- 
nality. One  of  our  duties  is  to  know  truth,  and 
rationalist  thinkers  have  always  assumed  it 
to  be  our  sovereign  duty.  But  in  scholastic 
theism  we  find  truth  already  instituted  and 
established  without  our  help,  complete  apart 
from  our  knowing ; and  the  most  we  can  do  is 
to  acknowledge  it  passively  and  adhere  to  it, 
altho  such  adhesion  as  ours  can  make  no  jot 

27 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

of  difference  to  what  is  adhered  to.  The  situ- 
ation here  again  is  radically  dualistic.  It  is  not 
as  if  the  world  came  to  know  itself,  or  God 
came  to  know  himself,  partly  through  us,  as 
pantheistic  idealists  have  maintained,  but 
truth  exists  per  se  and  absolutely,  by  God’s 
grace  and  decree,  no  matter  who  of  us  knows 
it  or  is  ignorant,  and  it  would  continue  to 
exist  unaltered,  even  though  we  finite  knowers 
were  all  annihilated. 

It  has  to  be  confessed  that  this  dualism  and 
lack  of  intimacy  has  always  operated  as  a drag 
and  handicap  on  Christian  thought.  Orthodox 
theology  has  had  to  wage  a steady  fight  within 
the  schools  against  the  various  forms  of  pan- 
theistic heresy  which  the  mystical  experiences 
of  religious  persons,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
formal  or  aesthetic  superiorities  of  monism  to 
dualism,  on  the  other,  kept  producing.  God  as 
intimate  soul  and  reason  of  the  universe  has 
always  seemed  to  some  people  a more  worthy 
conception  than  God  as  external  creator.  So 
conceived,  he  appeared  to  unify  the  world  more 
perfectly,  he  made  it  less  finite  and  mechani- 

28 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 


cal,  and  in  comparison  with  such  a God  an 
external  creator  seemed  more  like  the  product 
of  a childish  fancy.  I have  been  told  by  Hin- 
doos that  the  great  obstacle  to  the  spread  of 
Christianity  in  their  country  is  the  puerility 
of  our  dogma  of  creation.  It  has  not  sweep 
and  infinity  enough  to  meet  the  requirements 
of  even  the  illiterate  natives  of  India. 

Assuredly  most  members  of  this  audience 
are  ready  to  side  with  Hinduism  in  this  matter. 
Those  of  us  who  are  sexagenarians  have  wit- 
nessed in  our  own  persons  one  of  those  gradual 
mutations  of  intellectual  climate,  due  to  in- 
numerable influences,  that  make  the  thought 
of  a past  generation  seem  as  foreign  to  its  suc- 
cessor as  if  it  were  the  expression  of  a different 
race  of  men.  The  theological  machinery  that 
spoke  so  livingly  to  our  ancestors,  with  its  finite 
age  of  the  world,  its  creation  out  of  nothing,  its 
juridical  morality  and  eschatology,  its  relish 
for  rewards  and  punishments,  its  treatment  of 
God  as  an  external  contriver,  an  ‘ intelligent 
and  moral  governor,’  sounds  as  odd  to  most  of 
us  as  if  it  were  some  outlandish  savage  religion. 

29 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


The  vaster  vistas  which  scientific  evolutionism 
has  opened,  and  the  rising  tide  of  social  demo- 
cratic ideals,  have  changed  the  type  of  our 
imagination,  and  the  older  monarchical  theism 
is  obsolete  or  obsolescent.  The  place  of  the 
divine  in  the  world  must  be  more  organic  and 
intimate.  An  external  creator  and  his  institu- 
tions may  still  be  verbally  confessed  at  Church 
in  formulas  that  linger  by  their  mere  inertia, 
but  the  life  is  out  of  them,  we  avoid  dwelling 
on  them,  the  sincere  heart  of  us  is  elsewhere. 

I shall  leave  cynical  materialism  entirely 
out  of  our  discussion  as  not  calling  for  treat- 
ment before  this  present  audience,  and  I shall 
ignore  old-fashioned  dualistic  theism  for  the 
same  reason.  Our  contemporary  mind  having 
once  for  all  grasped  the  possibility  of  a more 
intimate  Weltanschauung,  the  only  opinions 
quite  wyorthy  of  arresting  our  attention  will  fall 
within  the  general  scope  of  what  may  roughly 
be  called  the  pantheistic  field  of  vision,  the 
vision  of  God  as  the  indwelling  divine  rather 
than  the  external  creator,  and  of  human  life  as 
part  and  parcel  of  that  deep  reality. 

30 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 

As  we  have  found  that  spiritualism  in  gen- 
eral breaks  into  a more  intimate  and  a less 
intimate  species,  so  the  more  intimate  species 
itself  breaks  into  two  subspecies,  of  which  the 
one  is  more  monistic,  the  other  more  plural- 
istic in  form.  I say  in  form,  for  our  vocabulary 
gets  unmanageable  if  we  don’t  distinguish  be- 
tween form  and  substance  here.  The  inner  life 
of  things  must  be  substantially  akin  anyhow 
to  the  tenderer  parts  of  man’s  nature  in  any 
spiritualistic  philosophy.  The  wmrd  ‘intimacy’ 
probably  covers  the  essential  difference.  Ma- 
terialism holds  the  foreign  in  things  to  be  more 
primary  and  lasting,  it  sends  us  to  a lonely 
corner  with  our  intimacy.  The  brutal  aspects 
overlap  and  outwear;  refinement  has  the 
feebler  and  more  ephemeral  hold  on  reality. 

From  a pragmatic  point  of  view  the  differ- 
ence between  living  against  a background  of 
foreignness  and  one  of  intimacy  means  the  dif- 
ference between  a general  habit  of  wariness 
and  one  of  trust.  One  might  call  it  a social  dif- 
ference, for  after  all,  the  common  socius  of  us 
all  is  the  great  universe  whose  children  we  are. 

31 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


If  materialistic,  we  must  be  suspicious  of  this 
socius,  cautious,  tense,  on  guard.  If  spiritual- 
istic, we  may  give  way,  embrace,  and  keep  no 
ultimate  fear. 

The  contrast  is  rough  enough,  and  can  be 
cut  across  by  all  sorts  of  other  divisions,  drawn 
from  other  points  of  view  than  that  of  foreign- 
ness and  intimacy.  We  have  so  many  different 
businesses  with  nature  that  no  one  of  them 
yields  us  an  all-embracing  clasp.  The  phi- 
losophic attempt  to  define  nature  so  that  no 
one’s  business  is  left  out,  so  that  no  one  lies  out- 
side the  door  saying  ‘Where  do  I come  in?’ 
is  sure  in  advance  to  fail.  The  most  a philoso- 
phy can  hope  for  is  not  to  lock  out  any  interest 
forever.  No  matter  what  doors  it  closes,  it 
must  leave  other  doors  open  for  the  interests 
which  it  neglects.  I have  begun  by  shutting 
ourselves  up  to  intimacy  and  foreignness 
because  that  makes  so  generally  interesting 
a contrast,  and  because  it  will  conveniently 
introduce  a farther  contrast  to  which  I wish 
this  hour  to  lead. 

The  majority  of  men  are  sympathetic.  Com- 
32 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 


paratively  few  are  cynics  because  they  like 
cynicism,  and  most  of  our  existing  materialists 
are  such  because  they  think  the  evidence  of 
facts  impels  them,  or  because  they  find  the 
idealists  they  are  in  contact  with  too  private 
and  tender-minded;  so,  rather  than  join  their 
company,  they  fly  to  the  opposite  extreme.  I 
therefore  propose  to  you  to  disregard  material- 
ists altogether  for  the  present,  and  to  consider 
the  sympathetic  party  alone. 

It  is  normal,  I say,  to  be  sympathetic  in  the 
sense  in  which  I use  the  term.  Not  to  demand 
intimate  relations  with  the  universe,  and  not  to 
wish  them  satisfactory,  should  be  accounted 
signs  of  something  wrong.  Accordingly  when 
minds  of  this  type  reach  the  philosophic  level, 
and  seek  some  unification  of  their  vision,  they 
find  themselves  compelled  to  correct  that  abo- 
riginal appearance  of  things  by  which  savages 
are  not  troubled.  That  sphinx-like  presence, 
with  its  breasts  and  claws,  that  first  bald  multi- 
fariousness, is  too  discrepant  an  object  for  phi- 
losophic contemplation.  The  intimacy  and  the 
foreignness  cannot  be  written  down  as  simply 

33 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

coexisting.  An  order  must  be  made;  and  in 
that  order  the  higher  side  of  things  must  domi- 
nate. The  philosophy  of  the  absolute  agrees 
with  the  pluralistic  philosophy  which  I am 
going  to  contrast  with  it  in  these  lectures,  in 
that  both  identify  human  substance  with  the 
divine  substance.  But  whereas  absolutism 
thinks  that  the  said  substance  becomes  fully 
divine  only  in  the  form  of  totality,  and  is  not 
its  real  self  in  any  form  but  the  all- form,  the 
pluralistic  view  which  I prefer  to  adopt  is  will- 
ing to  believe  that  there  may  ultimately  never 
be  an  all-form  at  all,  that  the  substance  of 
reality  may  never  get  totally  collected,  that 
some  of  it  may  remain  outside  of  the  largest 
combination  of  it  ever  made,  and  that  a dis- 
tributive form  of  reality,  the  each- form,  is 
logically  as  acceptable  and  empirically  as 
probable  as  the  all-form  commonly  acquiesced 
in  as  so  obviously  the  self-evident  thing.  The 
contrast  between  these  two  forms  of  a reality 
which  we  will  agree  to  suppose  substantially 
spiritual  is  practically  the  topic  of  this  course 
of  lectures.  You  see  now  what  I mean  by  pan- 

34 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 

theism’s  two  subspecies.  If  we  give  to  the 
monistic  subspecies  the  name  of  philosophy 
of  the  absolute,  we  may  give  that  of  radical 
empiricism  to  its  pluralistic  rival,  and  it  may 
be  well  to  distinguish  them  occasionally  later 
by  these  names. 

As  a convenient  way  of  entering  into  the 
study  of  their  differences,  I may  refer  to  a 
recent  article  by  Professor  Jacks  of  Manches- 
ter College.  Professor  Jacks,  in  some  brilliant 
pages  in  the  ‘Hibbert  Journal’  for  last  Octo- 
ber, studies  the  relation  between  the  universe 
and  the  philosopher  who  describes  and  defines 
it  for  us.  You  may  assume  two  cases,  he  says. 
Either  what  the  philosopher  tells  us  is  extra- 
neous to  the  universe  he  is  accounting  for,  an 
indifferent  parasitic  outgrowth,  so  to  speak ; or 
the  fact  of  his  philosophizing  is  itself  one  of  the 
things  taken  account  of  in  the  philosophy,  and 
self-included  in  the  description.  In  the  former 
case  the  philosopher  means  by  the  universe 
everything  except  what  his  own  presence  brings ; 
in  the  latter  case  his  philosophy  is  itself  an 
intimate  part  of  the  universe,  and  may  be  a 

35 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


part  momentous  enough  to  give  a different  turn 
to  what  the  other  parts  signify.  It  may  be  a 
supreme  reaction  of  the  universe  upon  itself 
by  which  it  rises  to  self-comprehension.  It 
may  handle  itself  differently  in  consequence 
of  this  event. 

Now  both  empiricism  and  absolutism  bring 
the  philosopher  inside  and  make  man  intimate, 
but  the  one  being  pluralistic  and  the  other 
monistic,  they  do  so  in  differing  ways  that 
need  much  explanation.  Let  me  then  contrast 
the  one  with  the  other  way  of  representing  the 
status  of  the  human  thinker. 

For  monism  the  world  is  no  collection,  but 
one  great  all-inclusive  fact  outside  of  which  is 
nothing  — nothing  is  its  only  alternative.  When 
the  monism  is  idealistic,  this  all-enveloping  fact 
is  represented  as  an  absolute  mind  that  makes 
the  partial  facts  by  thinking  them,  just  as  we 
make  objects  in  a dream  by  dreaming  them,  or 
personages  in  a story  by  imagining  them.  To 
be,  on  this  scheme,  is,  on  the  part  of  a finite 
thing,  to  be  an  object  for  the  absolute ; and  on 
the  part  of  the  absolute  it  is  to  be  the  thinker  of 

36 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 


that  assemblage  of  objects.  If  we  use  the  word 
« content  ’ here,  we  see  that  the  absolute  and  the 
world  have  an  identical  content.  The  absolute 
is  nothing  but  the  knowledge  of  those  objects ; 
the  objects  are  nothing  but  what  the  absolute 
knows.  The  world  and  the  all-thinker  thus 
compenetrate  and  soak  each  other  up  without 
residuum.  They  are  but  two  names  for  the  same 
identical  material,  considered  now  from  the 
subjective,  and  now  from  the  objective  point  of 
view  — gedanke  and  gedachtes,  as  we  would 
say  if  we  were  Germans.  We  philosophers  nat- 
urally form  part  of  the  material,  on  the  monis- 
tic scheme.  The  absolute  makes  us  by  thinking 
us,  and  if  we  ourselves  are  enlightened  enough 
to  be  believers  in  the  absolute,  one  may  then 
say  that  our  philosophizing  is  one  of  the  ways 
:n  which  the  absolute  is  conscious  of  itself. 
This  is  +he  full  pantheistic  scheme,  the  iden- 
titatsphilosophie,  the  immanence  of  God  in  his 
creation,  a conception  sublime  from  its  tre- 
mendous unity.  And  yet  that  unity  is  incom- 
plete, as  closer  examination  will  show. 

The  absolute  and  the  world  are  one  fact,  I 


37 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

said,  when  materially  considered.  Our  philoso- 
phy, for  example,  is  not  numerically  distinct 
from  the  absolute’s  own  knowledge  of  itself, 
not  a duplicate  and  copy  of  it,  it  is  part  of 
that  very  knowledge,  is  numerically  identical 
with  as  much  of  it  as  our  thought  covers.  The 
absolute  just  is  our  philosophy,  along  with 
everything  else  that  is  known,  in  an  act  of 
knowing  which  (to  use  the  words  of  my  gifted 
absolutist  colleague  Royce)  forms  in  its  whole- 
ness one  luminously  transparent  conscious 
moment. 

But  one  as  we  are  in  this  material  sense  with 
the  absolute  substance,  that  being  only  the 
whole  of  us,  and  we  only  the  parts  of  it,  yet  in 
a formal  sense  something  like  a pluralism  breaks 
out.  When  we  speak  of  the  absolute  we  take 
the  one  universal  known  material  collectively 
or  integrally;  when  we  speak  of  its  objects,  of 
our  finite  selves,  etc.,  we  take  that  same  iden- 
tical material  distributively  and  separately. 
But  what  is  the  use  of  a thing’s  being  only  once 
if  it  caL  be  taken  twice  over,  and  if  being  taken 
in  different  ways  makes  different  things  true 

38 


I.  THE  TYPES  OF  THINKING 

of  it  ? As  the  absolute  takes  me,  for  example, 
I appear  with  everything  else  in  its  field 
of  perfect  knowledge.  As  I take  myself,  I 
appear  without  most  other  things  in  my  field 
of  relative  ignorance.  And  practical  differences 
result  from  its  knowledge  and  my  ignorance. 
Ignorance  breeds  mistake,  curiosity,  misfor- 
tune, pain,  for  me ; I suffer  those  consequences. 
The  absolute  knows  of  those  things,  of  course, 
for  it  knowTs  me  and  my  suffering,  but  it 
does  n’t  itself  suffer.  It  can’t  be  ignorant,  for 
simultaneous  with  its  knowledge  of  each  ques- 
tion goes  its  knowledge  of  each  answer.  It 
can’t  be  patient,  for  it  has  to  wait  for  nothing, 
having  everything  at  once  in  its  possession.  It 
can’t  be  surprised;  it  can’t  be  guilty.  No  at- 
tribute connected  with  succession  can  be  ap- 
plied to  it,  for  it  is  all  at  once  and  wholly  what 
it  is,  ‘ with  the  unity  of  a single  instant,’  and 
succession  is  not  of  it  but  in  it,  for  we  are 
continually  told  that  it  is  ‘ timeless.’ 

Things  true  of  the  world  in  its  finite  aspects, 
then,  are  not  true  of  it  in  its  infinite  capacity. 
Qua  finite  and  plural  its  accounts  of  itself  to 

39 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


itself  are  different  from  what  its  account  to 
itself  qua  infinite  and  one  must  be. 

With  this  radical  discrepancy  between  the 
absolute  and  the  relative  points  of  view,  it  seems 
to  me  that  almost  as  great  a bar  to  intimacy 
between  the  divine  and  the  human  breaks  out 
in  pantheism  as  that  which  we  found  in  mo- 
narchical theism,  and  hoped  that  pantheism 
might  not  show.  We  humans  are  incurably 
rooted  in  the  temporal  point  of  view.  The  eter- 
nal’s ways  are  utterly  unlike  our  ways.  ‘ Let 
us  imitate  the  All,’  said  the  original  prospectus 
of  that  admirable  Chicago  quarterly  called  the 
‘ Monist.’  As  if  we  could,  either  in  thought  or 
conduct!  We  are  invincibly  parts,  let  us  talk 
as  we  will,  and  must  always  apprehend  the 
absolute  as  if  it  were  a foreign  being.  If  what 
I mean  by  this  is  not  wholly  clear  to  you  at  this 
point,  it  ought  to  grow  clearer  as  my  lectures 
proceed. 


II 


MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


LECTURE  II 


MONISTIC  IDEALISM 

XiET  me  recall  to  you  the  programme  which 
I indicated  to  you  at  our  last  meeting.  After 
agreeing  not  to  consider  materialism  in  any 
shape,  but  to  place  ourselves  straightway  upon 
a more  spiritualistic  platform,  I pointed  out 
three  kinds  of  spiritual  philosophy  between 
which  we  are  asked  to  choose.  The  first  way 
was  that  of  the  older  dualistic  theism,  with 
ourselves  represented  as  a secondary  order  of 
substances  created  by  God.  We  found  that 
this  allowed  of  a degree  of  intimacy  with  the 
creative  principle  inferior  to  that  implied  in 
the  pantheistic  belief  that  we  are  substantially 
one  with  it,  and  that  the  divine  is  therefore 
the  most  intimate  of  all  our  possessions,  heart 
of  our  heart,  in  fact.  But  we  saw  that  this 
pantheistic  belief  could  be  held  in  two  forms, 
a monistic  form  which  I called  philosophy  of 
the  absolute,  and  a pluralistic  form  which  I 
called  radical  empiricism,  the  former  conceiv- 
ing that  the  divine  exists  authentically  only 

43 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


when  the  world  is  experienced  all  at  once  in 
its  absolute  totality,  whereas  radical  empiricism 
allows  that  the  absolute  sum-total  of  things 
may  never  be  actually  experienced  or  realized 
in  that  shape  at  all,  and  that  a disseminated, 
distributed,  or  incompletely  unified  appear- 
ance is  the  only  form  that  reality  may  yet 
have  achieved. 

I may  contrast  the  monistic  and  pluralistic 
forms  in  question  as  the  ‘all-form’  and  the 
‘each-form.’  At  the  end  of  the  last  hour  I ani- 
madverted on  the  fact  that  the  all-form  is  so 
radically  different  from  the  each-form,  which 
is  our  human  form  of  experiencing  the  world, 
that  the  philosophy  of  the  absolute,  so  far  as 
insight  and  understanding  go,  leaves  us  almost 
as  much  outside  of  the  divine  being  as  dual- 
istic  theism  does.  I believe  that  radical  em- 
piricism, on  the  contrary,  holding  to  the  each- 
form,  and  making  of  God  only  one  of  the 
eaches,  affords  the  higher  degree  of  intimacy. 
The  general  thesis  of  these  lectures  I said  would 
be  a defence  of  the  pluralistic  against  the  mo- 
nistic view.  Think  of  the  universe  as  existing 

44 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


solely  in  the  each-form,  and  you  will  have  on 
the  whole  a more  reasonable  and  satisfactory 
idea  of  it  than  if  you  insist  on  the  all-form  being 
necessary.  The  rest  of  my  lectures  will  do  little 
more  than  make  this  thesis  more  concrete,  and 
I hope  more  persuasive. 

It  is  curious  how  little  countenance  radical 
pluralism  has  ever  had  from  philosophers. 
Whether  materialistically  or  spiritualistically 
minded,  philosophers  have  always  aimed  at 
cleaning  up  the  litter  with  which  the  world 
apparently  is  filled.  They  have  substituted 
economical  and  orderly  conceptions  for  the 
first  sensible  tangle;  and  whether  these  were 
morally  elevated  or  only  intellectually  neat, 
they  were  at  any  rate  always  aesthetically  pure 
and  definite,  and  aimed  at  ascribing  to  the 
world  something  clean  and  intellectual  in  the 
way  of  inner  structure.  As  compared  with  all 
these  rationalizing  pictures,  the  pluralistic  em- 
piricism which  I profess  offers  but  a sorry 
appearance.  It  is  a turbid,  muddled,  gothic 
sort  of  an  affair,  without  a sweeping  outline 
and  with  little  pictorial  nobility.  Those  of  you 

45 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

who  are  accustomed  to  the  classical  construc- 
tions of  reality  may  be  excused  if  your  first  re- 
action upon  it  be  absolute  contempt — a shrug 
of  the  shoulders  as  if  such  ideas  were  unwor- 
thy of  explicit  refutation.  But  one  must  have 
lived  some  time  with  a system  to  appreciate 
its  merits.  Perhaps  a little  more  familiarity 
may  mitigate  your  first  surprise  at  such  a pro- 
gramme as  I offer. 

First,  one  word  more  than  what  I said  last 
time  about  the  relative  foreignness  of  the  divine 
principle  in  the  philosophy  of  the  absolute. 
Those  of  you  who  have  read  the  last  two  chap- 
ters of  Mr.  Bradley’s  wonderful  book,  ‘Ap- 
pearance and  reality,’  will  remember  what 
an  elaborately  foreign  aspect  his  absolute  is 
finally  made  to  assume.  It  is  neither  intelli- 
gence nor  will,  neither  a self  nor  a collection  of 
selves,  neither  truthful,  good,  nor  beautiful,  as 
we  understand  these  terms.  It  is,  in  short,  a 
metaphysical  monster,  all  that  we  are  permit- 
ted to  say  of  it  being  that  whatever  it  is,  it  is  at 
any  rate  worth  more  (worth  more  to  itself,  that 
is)  than  if  any  eulogistic  adjectives  of  ours 

46 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


applied  to  it.  It  is  us,  and  all  other  appear- 
ances, but  none  of  us  as  such,  for  in  it  we  are 
all  ‘transmuted,’  and  its  own  as-suchness  is 
of  another  denomination  altogether. 

Spinoza  was  the  first  great  absolutist,  and 
the  impossibility  of  being  intimate  with  his 
God  is  universally  recognized.  Quatenus  infi- 
nitus  est  he  is  other  than  what  he  is  quatenus 
humanam  mentem  constituit.  Spinoza’s  philo- 
sophy has  been  rightly  said  to  be  worked  by 
the  word  quatenus.  Conjunctions,  prepositions, 
and  adverbs  play  indeed  the  vital  part  in  all 
philosophies ; and  in  contemporary  idealism 
the  words  ‘as’  and  ‘qua’  bear  the  burden  of 
reconciling  metaphysical  unity  with  phenome- 
nal diversity.  Qua  absolute  the  world  is  one 
and  perfect,  qua  relative  it  is  many  and  faulty, 
yet  it  is  identically  the  self-same  world  — in- 
stead of  talking  of  it  as  many  facts,  we  call  it 
one  fact  in  many  aspects. 

As  absolute,  then,  or  sub  specie  eternitatis, 
or  quatenus  infinitus  est,  the  wTorld  repels  our 
sympathy  because  it  has  no  history.  As  such, 
the  absolute  neither  acts  nor  suffers,  nor  loves 


47 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

nor  hates ; it  has  no  needs,  desires,  or  aspira^ 
tions,  no  failures  or  successes,  friends  or  ene- 
mies, victories  or  defeats.  All  such  things  per- 
tain to  the  world  qua  relative,  in  which  our 
finite  experiences  lie,  and  whose  vicissitudes 
alone  have  power  to  arouse  our  interest.  What 
boots  it  to  tell  me  that  the  absolute  way  is  the 
true  way,  and  to  exhort  me,  as  Emerson  says, 
to  lift  mine  eye  up  to  its  style,  and  manners  of 
the  sky,  if  the  feat  is  impossible  by  definition  ? 
I am  finite  once  for  all,  and  all  the  categories  of 
my  sympathy  are  knit  up  with  the  finite  world 
as  such,  and  with  things  that  have  a history. 
‘Aus  dieser  erde  quellen  meine  freuden,  und 
ilire  sonne  scheinet  meinen  leiden.’  I have 
neither  eyes  nor  ears  nor  heart  nor  mind  for 
anything  of  an  opposite  description,  and  the 
stagnant  felicity  of  the  absolute’s  own  perfec- 
tion moves  me  as  little  as  I move  it.  If  we 
were  readers  only  of  the  cosmic  novel,  things 
would  be  different:  we  should  then  share  the 
author’s  point  of  view  and  recognize  villains 
to  be  as  essential  as  heroes  in  the  plot.  But 
we  are  not  the  readers  but  the  very  personages 

48 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


of  the  world-drama.  In  your  own  eyes  each  of 
you  here  is  its  hero,  and  the  villains  are  your 
respective  friends  or  enemies.  The  tale  which 
the  absolute  reader  finds  so  perfect,  we  spoil 
for  one  another  through  our  several  vital 
identifications  with  the  destinies  of  the  par- 
ticular personages  involved. 

The  doctrine  on  which  the  absolutists  lay 
most  stress  is  the  absolute’s  ‘timeless’  char- 
acter. For  pluralists,  on  the  other  hand,  time 
remains  as  real  as  anything,  and  nothing  in  the 
universe  is  great  or  static  or  eternal  enough 
not  to  have  some  history.  But  the  world  that 
each  of  us  feels  most  intimately  at  home  with 
is  that  of  beings  with  histories  that  play  into 
our  history,  whom  we  can  help  in  their  vicissi- 
tudes even  as  they  help  us  in  ours.  This  satis- 
faction the  absolute  denies  us ; we  can  neither 
help  nor  hinder  it,  for  it  stands  outside  of 
history.  It  surely  is  a merit  in  a philosophy 
to  make  the  very  life  we  lead  seem  real  and 
earnest.  Pluralism,  in  exorcising  the  absolute, 
exorcises  the  great  de-realizer  of  the  only  life 
we  are  at  home  in,  and  thus  redeems  the  nature 


49 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


of  reality  from  essential  foreignness.  Every 
end,  reason,  motive,  object  of  desire  or  aver- 
sion, ground  of  sorrow  or  joy  that  we  feel  is 
in  the  world  of  finite  multifariousness,  for 
only  in  that  world  does  anything  really  hap- 
pen, only  there  do  events  come  to  pass. 

In  one  sense  this  is  a far-fetched  and  rather 
childish  objection,  for  so  much  of  the  history 
of  the  finite  is  as  formidably  foreign  to  us  as 
the  static  absolute  can  possibly  be  — in  fact 
that  entity  derives  its  own  foreignness  largely 
from  the  bad  character  of  the  finite  which  it 
simultaneously  is  — that  this  sentimental  rea- 
son for  preferring  the  pluralistic  view  seems 
small.1  I shall  return  to  the  subject  in  my  final 
lecture,  and  meanwhile,  with  your  permission, 
I will  say  no  more  about  this  objection.  The 
more  so  as  the  necessary  foreignness  of  the 
absolute  is  cancelled  emotionally  by  its  attri- 
bute of  totality,  which  is  universally  considered 
to  carry  the  further  attribute  of  'perfection  in 
its  train.  ‘Philosophy,’  says  a recent  ameri- 
can  philosopher,  ‘ is  humanity’s  hold  on  total- 
ity,’ and  there  is  no  doubt  that  most  of  us  find 

50 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 

that  the  bare  notion  of  an  absolute  all-one  is 
inspiring.  ‘I  yielded  myself  to  the  perfect 
whole,’  writes  Emerson ; and  where  can  you 
find  a more  mind-dilating  object  ? A certain 
loyalty  is  called  forth  by  the  idea ; even  if  not 
proved  actual,  it  must  be  believed  in  somehow. 
Only  an  enemy  of  philosophy  can  speak  lightly 
of  it.  Rationalism  starts  from  the  idea  of  such 
a whole  and  builds  downward.  Movement  and 
change  are  absorbed  into  its  immutability  as 
forms  of  mere  appearance.  When  you  accept 
this  beatific  vision  of  what  is,  in  contrast  with 
what  goes  on,  you  feel  as  if  you  had  fulfilled 
an  intellectual  duty.  ‘Reality  is  not  in  its 
truest  nature  a process,’  Mr.  McTaggart  tells 
us,  ‘but  a stable  and  timeless  state.’2  ‘The 
true  knowledge  of  God  begins,’  Hegel  writes, 
‘when  we  know  that  things  as  they  immedi- 
ately are  have  no  truth.’  3 ‘ The  consumma- 
tion of  the  infinite  aim,’  he  says  elsewThere, 
‘ consists  merely  in  removing  the  illusion  which 
makes  it  seem  yet  unaccomplished.  Good  and 
absolute  goodness  is  eternally  accomplishing 
itself  in  the  world : and  the  result  is  that  if  needs 

51 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


not  wait  upon  us,  but  is  already  . . . accom- 
plished. It  is  an  illusion  under  which  we  live. 
. . . In  the  course  of  its  process  the  Idea 
makes  itself  that  illusion,  by  setting  an  antithe- 
sis to  confront  it,  and  its  action  consists  in  get- 
ting rid  of  the  illusion  which  it  has  created.’ 4 

But  abstract  emotional  appeals  of  any  kind 
sound  amateurish  in  the  business  that  concerns 
us.  Impressionistic  philosophizing,  like  im- 
pressionistic watchmaking  or  land-surveying, 
is  intolerable  to  experts.  Serious  discussion  of 
the  alternative  before  us  forces  me,  therefore, 
to  become  more  technical.  The  great  claim  of 
the  philosophy  of  the  absolute  is  that  the  abso- 
lute is  no  hypothesis,  but  a presupposition 
implicated  in  all  thinking,  and  needing  only 
a little  effort  of  analysis  to  be  seen  as  a logical 
necessity.  I will  therefore  take  it  in  this  more 
rigorous  character  and  see  whether  its  claim  is 
in  effect  so  coercive. 

It  has  seemed  coercive  to  an  enormous  num- 
ber of  contemporaneous  thinkers.  Professor 
Henry  Jones  thus  describes  the  range  and  in- 
fluence of  it  upon  the  social  and  political  life  of 

52 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 

the  present  time : 5 ‘ For  many  years  adherents 
of  this  way  of  thought  have  deeply  interested 
the  british  public  by  their  writings.  Almost 
more  important  than  their  writings  is  the  fact 
that  they  have  occupied  philosophical  chairs 
in  almost  every  university  in  the  kingdom. 
Even  the  professional  critics  of  idealism  are 
for  the  most  part  idealists  — after  a fashion. 
And  when  they  are  not,  they  are  as  a rule  more 
occupied  with  the  refutation  of  idealism  than 
with  the  construction  of  a better  theory.  It  fol- 
lows from  their  position  of  academic  authority, 
were  it  from  nothing  else,  that  idealism  exer- 
cises an  influence  not  easily  measured  upon  the 
youth  of  the  nation  — upon  those,  that  is,  who 
from  the  educational  opportunities  they  enjoy 
may  naturally  be  expected  to  become  the  lead- 
ers of  the  nation’s  thought  and  practice.  . . . 
Difficult  as  it  is  to  measure  the  forces  ...  it 
is  hardly  to  be  denied  that  the  power  exercised 
by  Bentham  and  the  utilitarian  school  has,  for 
better  or  for  worse,  passed  into  the  hands  of 
the  idealists.  . . . “ The  Rhine  has  flowed  into 
the  Thames  ” is  the  warning  note  rung  out  by 

53 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


Mr.  Hobhouse.  Carlyle  introduced  it,  bringing 
it  as  far  as  Chelsea.  Then  Jowett  and  Thomas 
Hill  Green,  and  William  Wallace  and  Lewis 
Nettleship,  and  Arnold  Toynbee  and  David 
Ritchie  — to  mention  only  those  teachers  whose 
voices  now  are  silent  — guided  the  waters  into 
those  upper  reaches  known  locally  as  the  Isis. 
John  and  Edward  Caird  brought  them  up  the 
Clyde,  Hutchison  Stirling  up  the  Firth  of 
Forth.  They  have  passed  up  the  Mersey  and 
up  the  Severn  and  Dee  and  Don.  They  pollute 
the  bay  of  St.  Andrews  and  swell  the  waters  of 
the  Cam,  and  have  somehow  crept  overland  into 
Birmingham.  The  stream  of  german  idealism 
has  been  diffused  over  the  academical  world  of 
Great  Britain.  The  disaster  is  universal.’ 

Evidently  if  weight  of  authority  were  all,  the 
truth  of  absolutism  would  be  thus  decided. 
But  let  us  first  pass  in  review  the  general  style 
of  argumentation  of  that  philosophy. 

As  I read  it,  its  favorite  way  of  meeting  plu- 
ralism and  empiricism  is  by  a reductio  ad  ab - 
surdum  framed  somewhat  as  follows : You  con- 
tend, it  says  to  the  pluralist,  that  things,  though 

54 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


in  some  respects  connected,  are  in  other  respects 
independent,  so  that  they  are  not  members  of 
one  all-inclusive  individual  fact.  Well,  your 
position  is  absurd  on  either  point.  For  admit 
in  fact  the  slightest  modicum  of  independence, 
and  you  find  (if  you  will  only  think  accurately) 
that  you  have  to  admit  more  and  more  of  it, 
until  at  last  nothing  but  an  absolute  chaos, 
or  the  proved  impossibility  of  any  connexion 
whatever  between  the  parts  of  the  universe, 
remains  upon  your  hands.  Admit,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  most  incipient  minimum  of  relation 
between  any  two  things,  and  again  you  can’t 
stop  until  you  see  that  the  absolute  unity  of 
all  things  is  implied. 

If  we  take  the  latter  reductio  ad  absurdum 
first,  we  find  a good  example  of  it  in  Lotze’s 
well-known  proof  of  monism  from  the  fact  of 
interaction  between  finite  things.  Suppose, 
Lotze  says  in  effect,  and  for  simplicity’s  sake 
I have  to  paraphrase  him,  for  his  own  words 
are  too  long  to  quote  — many  distinct  beings 
a,  b,  c,  etc.,  to  exist  independently  of  each  other : 
can  a in  that  case  ever  act  on  b ? 


55 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

What  is  it  to  act  ? Is  it  not  to  exert  an  influ- 
ence ? Does  the  influence  detach  itself  from  a 
and  find  b?  If  so,  it  is  a third  fact,  and  the  prob- 
lem is  not  how  a acts,  but  how  its  ‘influence’ 
acts  on  b.  By  another  influence  perhaps  ? And 
how  in  the  end  does  the  chain  of  influences  find 
b rather  than  c unless  b is  somehow  prefigured 
in  them  already  ? And  when  they  have  found  b, 
how  do  they  make  b respond,  if  b has  nothing 
in  common  with  them  ? Why  don’t  they  go 
right  through  b ? The  change  in  & is  a response , 
due  to  b’s  capacity  for  taking  account  of  a’s 
influence,  and  that  again  seems  to  prove  that 
b’s  nature  is  somehow  fitted  to  a’s  nature  in 
advance.  A and  b,  in  short,  are  not  really  as 
distinct  as  we  at  first  supposed  them,  not  sep- 
arated by  a void.  Were  this  so  they  would  be 
mutually  impenetrable,  or  at  least  mutually 
irrelevant.  They  would  form  two  universes 
each  living  by  itself,  making  no  difference  to 
each  other,  taking  no  account  of  each  other, 
much  as  the  universe  of  your  day  dreams  takes 
no  account  of  mine.  They  must  therefore 
belong  together  beforehand,  be  co-implicated 

56 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


already,  their  natures  must  have  an  inborn 
mutual  reference  each  to  each. 

Lotze’s  own  solution  runs  as  follows : The 
multiple  independent  things  supposed  cannot 
be  real  in  that  shape,  but  all  of  them,  if  recip- 
rocal action  is  to  be  possible  between  them, 
must  be  regarded  as  parts  of  a single  real 
being,  M.  The  pluralism  with  which  our  view 
began  has  to  give  place  to  a monism;  and 
the  ‘transeunt’  interaction,  being  unintelligi- 
ble as  such,  is  to  be  understood  as  an  imma- 
nent operation.6 

The  words  ‘ immanent  operation  ’ seem  here 
to  mean  that  the  single  real  being  M,  of  which 
a and  b are  members,  is  the  only  thing  that 
changes,  and  that  wThen  it  changes,  it  changes 
inwardly  and  all  over  at  once.  When  part  a 
in  it  changes,  consequently,  part  b must  also 
change,  but  without  the  whole  M changing 
this  would  not  occur. 

A pretty  argument,  but  a purely  verbal  one, 
as  I apprehend  it.  Call  your  a and  b distinct, 
they  can’t  interact;  call  them  one,  they  can. 
For  taken  abstractly  and  without  qualification 

57 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


the  words  ‘ distinct  ’ and  ‘ independent’  suggest 
only  disconnection.  If  this  be  the  only  pro- 
perty of  your  a and  b (and  it  is  the  only  property 
your  words  imply),  then  of  course,  since  you 
can’t  deduce  their  mutual  influence  from  it, 
you  can  find  no  ground  of  its  occurring  between 
them.  Your  bare  word  ‘separate,’  contradict- 
ing your  bare  word  ‘ joined,’  seems  to  exclude 
connexion. 

Lotze’s  remedy  for  the  impossibility  thus 
verbally  found  is  to  change  the  first  word.  If, 
instead  of  calling  a and  b independent,  we  now 
call  them  ‘interdependent,’  ‘united,’  or  ‘one,’ 
he  says,  these  words  do  not  contradict  any  sort 
of  mutual  influence  that  may  be  proposed.  If 
a and  b are  ‘ one,’  and  the  one  changes,  a and  b 
of  course  must  co-ordinately  change.  What 
under  the  old  name  they  could  n’t  do,  they  now 
have  license  to  do  under  the  new  name. 

But  I ask  you  whether  giving  the  name  of 
‘one’  to  the  former  ‘many’  makes  us  really  un- 
derstand the  modus  operandi  of  interaction  any 
better.  We  have  now  given  verbal  permission 
to  the  many  to  change  all  together,  if  they  can ; 

58 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 

we  have  removed  a verbal  impossibility  and 
substituted  a verbal  possibility,  but  the  new 
name,  with  the  possibility  it  suggests,  tells  us 
nothing  of  the  actual  process  by  which  real 
things  that  are  one  can  and  do  change  at  all. 
In  point  of  fact  abstract  oneness  as  such  does  n’t 
change,  neither  has  it  parts  — any  more  than 
abstract  independence  as  such  interacts.  But 
then  neither  abstract  oneness  nor  abstract  in- 
dependence exists;  only  concrete  real  things 
exist,  which  add  to  these  properties  the  other 
properties  which  they  possess,  to  make  up 
what  we  call  their  total  nature.  To  construe 
any  one  of  their  abstract  names  as  making  their 
total  nature  impossible  is  a misuse  of  the  func- 
tion of  naming.  The  real  way  of  rescue  from 
the  abstract  consequences  of  one  name  is  not 
to  fly  to  an  opposite  name,  equally  abstract,  but 
rather  to  correct  the  first  name  by  qualifying 
adjectives  that  restore  some  concreteness  to 
the  case.  Don’t  take  your  ‘ independence  ’ sim- 
pliciter,  as  Lotze  does,  take  it  secundum  quid. 
Only  when  we  know  what  the  process  of  in- 
teraction literally  and  concretely  consists  in  can 

59 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


we  tell  whether  beings  independent  in  definite 
respects,  distinct,  for  example,  in  origin,  sepa- 
rate in  place,  different  in  kind,  etc.,  can  or 
cannot  interact. 

The  treating  of  a name  as  excluding  from 
the  fact  named  what  the  name’s  definition  fails 
positively  to  include,  is  what  I call  1 vicious 
intellectualism .’  Later  I shall  have  more  to 
say  about  this  intellectualism,  but  that  Lotze’s 
argument  is  tainted  by  it  I hardly  think  we  can 
deny.  As  well  might  you  contend  (to  use  an 
instance  from  Sigwart)  that  a person  whom 
you  have  once  called  an  ‘equestrian’  is  thereby 
forever  made  unable  to  walk  on  his  own  feet. 

I almost  feel  as  if  I should  apologize  for 
criticising  such  subtle  arguments  in  rapid  lec- 
tures of  this  kind.  The  criticisms  have  to  be  as 
abstract  as  the  arguments,  and  in  exposing 
their  unreality,  take  on  such  an  unreal  sound 
themselves  that  a hearer  not  nursed  in  the 
intellectualist  atmosphere  knows  not  which  of 
them  to  accuse.  But  le  vin  est  verse,  il  faut  le 
hoire,  and  I must  cite  a couple  more  instances 
before  I stop. 


60 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


If  we  are  empiricists  and  go  from  parts  to 
wholes,  we  believe  that  beings  may  first  exist 
and  feed  so  to  speak  on  their  own  existence, 
and  then  secondarily  become  known  to  one 
another.  But  philosophers  of  the  absolute  tell 
us  that  such  independence  of  being  from  being 
known  would,  if  once  admitted,  disintegrate 
the  universe  beyond  all  hope  of  mending.  The 
argument  is  one  of  Professor  Royce’s  proofs 
that  the  only  alternative  we  have  is  to  choose 
the  complete  disunion  of  all  things  or  their 
complete  union  in  the  absolute  One. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  proverb  ‘ a cat  may 
look  at  a king’  and  adopt  the  realistic  view 
that  the  king ’s  being  is  independent  of  the  cat’s 
witnessing.  This  assumption,  which  amounts 
to  saying  that  it  need  make  no  essential  differ- 
ence to  the  royal  object  whether  the  feline  sub- 
ject cognizes  him  or  not,  that  the  cat  may  look 
away  from  him  or  may  even  be  annihilated,  and 
the  king  remain  unchanged, — this  assumption, 
I say,  is  considered  by  my  ingenious  colleague 
to  lead  to  the  absurd  practical  consequence 
that  the  two  beings  can  never  later  acquire  any 

61 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

possible  linkages  or  connexions,  but  must  re- 
main eternally  as  if  in  different  worlds.  For 
suppose  any  connexion  whatever  to  ensue,  this 
connexion  would  simply  be  a third  being  addi- 
tional to  the  cat  and  the  king,  which  would 
itself  have  to  be  linked  to  both  by  additional 
links  before  it  could  connect  them,  and  so  on 
ad  infinitum , the  argument,  you  see,  being  the 
same  as  Lotze’s  about  how  a’s  influence  does 
its  influencing  when  it  influences  b. 

In  Royce’s  own  words,  if  the  king  can  be 
without  the  cat  knowing  him,  then  king  and 
cat  ‘ can  have  no  common  features,  no  ties,  no 
true  relations ; they  are  separated,  each  from 
the  other,  by  absolutely  impassable  chasms. 
They  can  never  come  to  get  either  ties  or  com- 
munity of  nature;  they  are  not  in  the  same 
space,  nor  in  the  same  time,  nor  in  the  same 
natural  or  spiritual  order.’  7 They  form  in 
short  two  unrelated  universes, — which  is  the 
reductio  ad  absurdum  required. 

To  escape  this  preposterous  state  of  things  we 
must  accordingly  revoke  the  original  hypothe- 
sis. The  kimj  and  the  cat  are  not  indifferent 

62 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


to  each  other  in  the  way  supposed.  But  if  not 
in  that  way,  then  in  no  way,  for  connexion  in 
that  way  carries  connexion  in  other  ways;  so 
that,  pursuing  the  reverse  line  of  reasoning,  we 
end  with  the  absolute  itself  as  the  smallest  fact 
that  can  exist.  Cat  and  king  are  co-involved, 
they  are  a single  fact  in  two  names,  they  can 
never  have  been  absent  from  each  other,  and 
they  are  both  equally  co-implicated  with  all 
the  other  facts  of  which  the  universe  consists. 

Professor  Royce’s  proof  that  whoso  admits 
the  cat’s  witnessing  the  king  at  all  must  there- 
upon admit  the  integral  absolute,  may  be 
briefly  put  as  follows:  — 

First,  to  know  the  king,  the  cat  must  intend 
that  king,  must  somehow  pass  over  and  lay 
hold  of  him  individually  and  specifically.  The 
cat’s  idea,  in  short,  must  transcend  the  cat’s 
own  separate  mind  and  somehow  include  the 
king,  for  were  the  king  utterly  outside  and  in- 
dependent of  the  cat,  the  cat’s  pure  other,  the 
beast’s  mind  could  touch  the  king  in  no  wise. 
This  makes  the  cat  much  less  distinct  from  the 
king  than  we  had  at  first  naively  supposed. 

03 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


There  must  be  some  prior  continuity  between 
them,  which  continuity  Royce  interprets  ideal- 
istically as  meaning  a higher  mind  that  owns 
them  both  as  objects,  and  owning  them  can  also 
own  any  relation,  such  as  the  supposed  wit- 
nessing, that  may  obtain  between  them.  Taken 
purely  pluralistically,  neither  of  them  can  own 
any  part  of  a between , because,  so  taken,  each 
is  supposed  shut  up  to  itself : the  fact  of  a 
between  thus  commits  us  to  a higher  knower. 

But  the  higher  knower  that  knows  the  two 
beings  we  start  with  proves  to  be  the  same 
knower  that  knows  everything  else.  For  as- 
sume any  third  being,  the  queen,  say,  and  as 
the  cat  knew  the  king,  so  let  the  king  know  his 
queen,  and  let  this  second  knowledge,  by  the 
same  reasoning,  require  a higher  knower  as  its 
presupposition.  That  knower  of  the  king’s 
knowing  must,  it  is  now  contended,  be  the 
same  higher  knower  that  was  required  for  the 
cat’s  knowing;  for  if  you  suppose  otherwise, 
you  have  no  longer  the  same  king.  This  may 
not  seem  immediately  obvious,  but  if  you  fol- 
low the  intellectualistic  logic  employed  in  all 

64 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 

these  reasonings,  I don’t  see  how  you  can  es- 
cape the  admission.  If  it  be  true  that  the  inde- 
pendent or  indifferent  cannot  be  related,  for  the 
abstract  words  ‘independent’  or  ‘indifferent’ 
as  such  imply  no  relation,  then  it  is  just  as  true 
that  the  king  known  by  the  cat  cannot  be  the 
king  that  knows  the  queen,  for  taken  merely  ‘ as 
such,’  the  abstract  term  ‘what  the  cat  knows’ 
and  the  abstract  term  ‘ what  knows  the  queen  ’ 
are  logically  distinct.  The  king  thus  logically 
breaks  into  two  kings,  with  nothing  to  connect 
them,  until  a higher  knower  is  introduced  to 
recognize  them  as  the  self-same  king  concerned 
in  any  previous  acts  of  knowledge  which  he  may 
have  brought  about.  This  he  can  do  because  he 
possesses  all  the  terms  as  his  own  objects  and 
can  treat  them  as  he  will.  Add  any  fourth  or 
fifth  term,  and  you  get  a like  result,  and  so  on, 
until  at  last  an  all-owning  knower,  otherwise 
called  the  absolute,  is  reached.  The  co-impli- 
cated  ‘ through-and- through ’ world  of  monism 
thus  stands  proved  by  irrefutable  logic,  and 
all  pluralism  appears  as  absurd. 

The  reasoning  is  pleasing  from  its  ingenuity, 
65 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


and  it  is  almost  a pity  that  so  straight  a bridge 
from  abstract  logic  to  concrete  fact  should  not 
bear  our  weight.  To  have  the  alternative  forced 
upon  us  of  admitting  either  finite  things  each 
cut  off  from  all  relation  with  its  environment, 
or  else  of  accepting  the  integral  absolute  with 
no  environment  and  all  relations  packed  within 
itself,  would  be  too  delicious  a simplification. 
But  the  purely  verbal  character  of  the  opera- 
tion is  undisguised.  Because  the  names  of 
finite  things  and  their  relations  are  disjoined, 
it  does  n’t  follow  that  the  realities  named  need  a 
dens  ex  machina  from  on  high  to  conjoin  them. 
The  same  things  disjoined  in  one  respect  ap- 
pear as  conjoined  in  another.  Naming  the  dis- 
junction does  n’t  debar  us  from  also  naming 
the  conjunction  in  a later  modifying  statement, 
for  the  two  are  absolutely  co-ordinate  elements 
in  the  finite  tissue  of  experience.  When  at 
Athens  it  was  found  self-contradictory  that  a 
boy  could  be  both  tall  and  short  (tall  namely 
in  respect  of  a child,  short  in  respect  of  a 
man),  the  absolute  had  not  yet  been  thought 
of,  but  it  might  just  as  well  have  been  invoked 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


by  Socrates  as  by  Lotze  or  Royce,  as  a relief 
from  his  peculiar  intellectualistic  difficulty. 

Everywhere  we  find  rationalists  using  the 
same  kind  of  reasoning.  The  primal  whole 
which  is  their  vision  must  be  there  not  only  as  a 
fact  but  as  a logical  necessity.  It  must  be  the 
minimum  that  can  exist  — either  that  absolute 
whole  is  there,  or  there  is  absolutely  nothing. 
The  logical  proof  alleged  of  the  irrationality  of 
supposing  otherwise,  is  that  you  can  deny  the 
whole  only  in  words  that  implicitly  assert  it. 
If  you  say  ‘ parts,’  of  what  are  they  parts  ? If 
you  call  them  a * many,’  that  very  word  unifies 
them.  If  you  suppose  them  unrelated  in  any 
particular  respect,  that  ‘respect’  connects 
them ; and  so  on.  In  short  you  fall  into  hope- 
less contradiction.  You  must  stay  either  at  one 
extreme  or  the  other.8  ‘Partly  this  and  partly 
that,’  partly  rational,  for  instance,  and  partly 
irrational,  is  no  admissible  description  of  the 
world.  If  rationality  be  in  it  at  all,  it  must  be 
in  it  throughout;  if  irrationality  be  in  it  any- 
where, that  also  must  pervade  it  throughout. 
It  must  be  wholly  rational  or  wholly  irrational, 

67 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


pure  universe  or  pure  multiverse  or  nulliverse ; 
and  reduced  to  this  violent  alternative,  no  one’s 
choice  ought  long  to  remain  doubtful.  The  in- 
dividual absolute,  with  its  parts  co-implicated 
through  and  through,  so  that  there  is  nothing 
in  any  part  by  which  any  other  part  can  remain 
inwardly  unaffected,  is  the  only  rational  sup- 
position. Connexions  of  an  external  sort,  by 
which  the  many  became  merely  continuous 
instead  of  being  consubstantial,  would  be  an 
irrational  supposition. 

Mr.  Bradley  is  the  pattern  champion  of  this 
philosophy  in  extremis , as  one  might  call  it, 
for  he  shows  an  intolerance  to  pluralism  so 
extreme  that  I fancy  few  of  his  readers  have 
been  able  fully  to  share  it.  His  reasoning  ex- 
emplifies everywhere  what  I call  the  vice  of 
intellectualism,  for  abstract  terms  are  used  by 
him  as  positively  excluding  all  that  their  defi- 
nition fails  to  include.  Some  Greek  sophists 
could  deny  that  we  may  say  that  man  is  good, 
for  man,  they  said,  means  only  man,  and  good 
means  only  good,  and  the  word  is  can’t  be 
construed  to  identify  such  disparate  meanings. 

68 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


Mr.  Bradley  revels  in  the  same  type  of  argu- 
ment. No  adjective  can  rationally  qualify  a 
substantive,  he  thinks,  for  if  distinct  from  the 
substantive,  it  can’t  be  united  with  it;  and  if 
not  distinct,  there  is  only  one  thing  there,  and 
nothing  left  to  unite.  Our  whole  pluralistic 
procedure  in  using  subjects  and  predicates  as 
we  do  is  fundamentally  irrational,  an  example 
of  the  desperation  of  our  finite  intellectual 
estate,  infected  and  undermined  as  that  is  by 
the  separatist  discursive  forms  which  are  our 
only  categories,  but  which  absolute  reality 
must  somehow  absorb  into  its  unity  and  over- 
come. 

Readers  of  ‘ Appearance  and  reality  ’ will 
remember  how  Mr.  Bradley  suffers  from  a 
difficulty  identical  with  that  to  which  Lotze  and 
Royce  fall  a prey  — how  shall  an  influence 
influence  ? how  shall  a relation  relate  ? Any 
conjunctive  relation  between  two  phenomenal 
experiences  a and  b must,  in  the  intellectualist 
philosophy  of  these  authors,  be  itself  a third 
entity ; and  as  such,  instead  of  bridging  the  one 
original  chasm,  it  can  only  create  two  smaller 

69 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

chasms,  each  to  be  freshly  bridged.  Instead  of 
hooking  a to  b,  it  needs  itself  to  be  hooked  by 
a fresh  relation  / to  a and  by  another  r"  to  b. 
These  new  relations  are  but  two  more  entities 
which  themselves  require  to  be  hitched  in 
turn  by  four  still  newer  relations — so  behold 
the  vertiginous  regressus  ad  infinitum  in  full 
career. 

Since  a regressus  ad  infinitum  is  deemed  ab- 
surd, the  notion  that  relations  come  ‘between’ 
their  terms  must  be  given  up.  No  mere  external 
go-between  can  logically  connect.  What  occurs 
must  be  more  intimate.  The  hooking  must  be 
a penetration,  a possession.  The  relation  must 
involve  the  terms,  each  term  must  involve  it, 
and  merging  thus  their  being  in  it,  they  must 
somehow  merge  their  being  in  each  other,  tho, 
as  they  seem  still  phenomenally  so  separate, 
we  can  never  conceive  exactly  how  it  is  that 
they  are  inwardly  one.  The  absolute,  however, 
must  be  supposed  able  to  perform  the  unifying 
feat  in  his  own  inscrutable  fashion. 

In  old  times,  whenever  a philosopher  was 
assailed  for  some  particularly  tough  absurdity 

70 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 

in  his  system,  he  was  wont  to  parry  the  attack 
by  the  argument  from  the  divine  omnipotence. 
‘Do  you  mean  to  limit  God’s  power?’  he 
would  reply : ‘ do  you  mean  to  say  that  God 
could  not,  if  he  would,  do  this  or  that  ? ’ This 
retort  was  supposed  to  close  the  mouths  of  all 
objectors  of  properly  decorous  mind.  The 
functions  of  the  bradleian  absolute  are  in  this 
particular  identical  with  those  of  the  theistic 
God.  Suppositions  treated  as  too  absurd  to 
pass  muster  in  the  finite  world  which  we  in- 
habit, the  absolute  must  be  able  to  make  good 
‘somehow’  in  his  ineffable  way.  First  we  hear 
Mr.  Bradley  convicting  things  of  absurdity; 
next,  calling  on  the  absolute  to  vouch  for  them 
quand  meme.  Invoked  for  no  other  duty,  that 
duty  it  must  and  shall  perform. 

The  strangest  discontinuity  of  our  world  of 
appearance  with  the  supposed  world  of  abso- 
lute reality  is  asserted  both  by  Bradley  and  by 
Royce ; and  both  writers,  the  latter  -with  great 
ingenuity,  seek  to  soften  the  violence  of  the  jolt. 
But  it  remains  violent  all  the  same,  and  is  felt 
to  be  so  by  most  readers.  Whoever  feels  the 

71 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


violence  strongly  sees  as  on  a diagram  in  just 
what  the  peculiarity  of  all  this  philosophy  of  the 
absolute  consists.  First,  there  is  a healthy  faith 
that  the  world  must  be  rational  and  self-con- 
sistent. ‘All  science,  all  real  knowledge,  all  ex- 
perience presuppose,’  as  Mr.  Ritchie  writes,  ‘ a 
coherent  universe.’  Next,  we  find  a loyal  cling- 
ing to  the  rationalist  belief  that  sense-data  and 
their  associations  are  incoherent,  and  that  only 
in  substituting  a conceptual  order  for  their  or- 
der can  truth  be  found.  Third,  the  substituted 
conceptions  are  treated  intellectualistically, 
that  is  as  mutually  exclusive  and  discontinuous, 
so  that  the  first  innocent  continuity  of  the  flow 
of  sense-experience  is  shattered  for  us  with- 
out any  higher  conceptual  continuity  taking  its 
place.  Finally,  since  this  broken  state  of  things 
is  intolerable,  the  absolute  deus  ex  machina  is 
called  on  to  mend  it  in  his  own  way,  since  we 
cannot  mend  it  in  ours. 

Any  other  picture  than  this  of  post-kantian 
absolutism  I am  unable  to  frame.  I see  the  in- 
tellectualistic  criticism  destroying  the  imme- 
diately given  coherence  of  the  phenomenal 

72 


IT.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 

world,  but  unable  to  make  its  own  conceptual 
substitutes  cohere,  and  I see  the  resort  to  the 
absolute  for  a coherence  of  a higher  type.  The 
situation  has  dramatic  liveliness,  but  it  is  in- 
wardly incoherent  throughout,  and  the  ques- 
tion inevitably  comes  up  whether  a mistake 
may  not  somewhere  have  crept  in  in  the  pro- 
cess that  has  brought  it  about.  May  not  the 
remedy  lie  rather  in  revising  the  intellectualist 
criticism  than  in  first  adopting  it  and  then  try- 
ing to  undo  its  consequences  by  an  arbitrary 
act  of  faith  in  an  unintelligible  agent.  May  not 
the  flux  of  sensible  experience  itself  contain  a 
rationality  that  has  been  overlooked,  so  that 
the  real  remedy  would  consist  in  harking  back 
to  it  more  intelligently,  and  not  in  advancing 
in  the  opposite  direction  away  from  it  and  even 
away  beyond  the  intellectualist  criticism  that 
disintegrates  it,  to  the  pseudo-rationality  of  the 
supposed  absolute  point  of  view.  I myself  be- 
lieve that  this  is  the  real  way  to  keep  rationality 
in  the  world,  and  that  the  traditional  ration- 
alism has  always  been  facing  in  the  wrong 
direction.  I hope  in  the  end  to  make  you 

73 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


share,  or  at  any  rate  respect,  this  belief,  but 
there  is  much  to  talk  of  before  we  get  to  that 
point. 

I employed  the  word  ‘ violent  ’ just  now  in 
describing  the  dramatic  situation  in  which  it 
pleases  the  philosophy  of  the  absolute  to  make 
its  camp.  I don’t  see  how  any  one  can  help  be- 
ing struck  in  absolutist  writings  by  that  curious 
tendency  to  fly  to  violent  extremes  of  which  I 
have  already  said  a word.  The  universe  must 
be  rational ; well  and  good ; but  how  rational  ? 
in  what  sense  of  that  eulogistic  but  ambigu- 
ous word  ? — this  would  seem  to  be  the  next 
point  to  bring  up.  There  are  surely  degrees  in 
rationality  that  might  be  discriminated  and 
described.  Things  can  be  consistent  or  coher- 
ent in  very  diverse  ways.  But  no  more  in  its 
conception  of  rationality  than  in  its  conception 
of  relations  can  the  monistic  mind  suffer  the 
notion  of  more  or  less.  Rationality  is  one  and 
indivisible : if  not  rational  thus  indivisibly,  the 
universe  must  be  completely  irrational,  and  no 
shadings  or  mixtures  or  compromises  can  ob- 
tain. Mr.  McTaggart  writes,  in  discussing  the 

74 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 

notion  of  a mixture:  ‘The  two  principles,  of 
rationality  and  irrationality,  to  which  the  uni- 
verse is  then  referred,  will  have  to  be  abso- 
lutely separate  and  independent.  For  if  there 
were  any  common  unity  to  which  they  should 
be  referred,  it  would  be  that  unity  and  not  its 
two  manifestations  which  would  be  the  ulti- 
mate explanation  . . . and  the  theory,  having 
thus  become  monistic,’9  would  resolve  itself 
into  the  same  alternative  once  more:  is  the 
single  principle  rational  through  and  through 
or  not  ? 

‘Can  a plurality  of  reals  be  possible?’  asks 
Mr.  Bradley,  and  answers,  ‘No,  impossible.’ 
For  it  would  mean  a number  of  beings  not 
dependent  on  each  other,  and  this  independ- 
ence their  plurality  would  contradict.  For  to 
be  ‘ many  ’ is  to  be  related,  the  word  having  no 
meaning  unless  the  units  are  somehow  taken 
together,  and  it  is  impossible  to  take  them  in 
a sort  of  unreal  void,  so  they  must  belong  to  a 
larger  reality,  and  so  carry  the  essence  of  the 
units  beyond  their  proper  selves,  into  a whole 
which  possesses  unity  and  is  a larger  system.10 

75 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

Either  absolute  independence  or  absolute  mu- 
tual dependence  — this,  then,  is  the  only  alter- 
native allowed  by  these  thinkers.  Of  course 
‘independence,’  if  absolute,  would  be  prepos- 
terous, so  the  only  conclusion  allowable  is  that, 
in  Ritchie’s  words,  ‘ every  single  event  is  ulti- 
mately related  to  every  other,  and  determined 
by  the  whole  to  which  it  belongs.’  The  whole 
complete  block-universe  through-and-through, 
therefore,  or  no  universe  at  all ! 

Professor  Taylor  is  so  naif  in  this  habit  of 
thinking  only  in  extremes  that  he  charges  the 
pluralists  with  cutting  the  ground  from  under 
their  own  feet  in  not  consistently  following 
it  themselves.  What  pluralists  say  is  that 
a universe  really  connected  loosely,  after  the 
pattern  of  our  daily  experience,  is  possible, 
and  that  for  certain  reasons  it  is  the  hypothe- 
sis to  be  preferred.  What  Professor  Taylor 
thinks  they  naturally  must  or  should  say  is  that 
any  other  sort  of  universe  is  logically  impos- 
sible, and  that  a totality  of  things  interrelated 
like  the  world  of  the  monists  is  not  an  hypothe- 
sis that  can  be  seriously  thought  out  at  all.11 

76 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


Meanwhile  no  sensible  pluralist  ever  flies  or 
wants  to  fly  to  this  dogmatic  extreme. 

If  chance  is  spoken  of  as  an  ingredient  of  the 
universe,  absolutists  interpret  it  to  mean  that 
double  sevens  are  as  likely  to  be  thrown  out  of 
a dice  box  as  double  sixes  are.  If  free-will  is 
spoken  of,  that  must  mean  that  an  english 
general  is  as  likely  to  eat  his  prisoners  to-day 
as  a Maori  chief  was  a hundred  years  ago.  It 
is  as  likely  — I am  using  Mr.  McTaggart’s 
examples  — that  a majority  of  Londoners  will 
burn  themselves  alive  to-morrow  as  that  they 
will  partake  of  food,  as  likely  that  I shall  be 
hanged  for  brushing  my  hair  as  for  committing 
a murder,12  and  so  forth,  through  various  sup- 
positions that  no  indeterminist  ever  sees  real 
reason  to  make. 

This  habit  of  thinking  only  in  the  most  vio- 
lent extremes  reminds  me  of  what  Mr.  Wells 
says  of  the  current  objections  to  socialism,  in 
his  wonderful  little  book,  ‘New  worlds  for 
old.’  The  commonest  vice  of  the  human  mind 
is  its  disposition  to  see  everything  as  yes  or  no, 
as  black  or  white,  its  incapacity  for  discrim- 

77 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

ination  of  intermediate  shades.  So  the  critics 
agree  to  some  hard  and  fast  impossible  defini- 
tion of  socialism,  and  extract  absurdities  from 
it  as  a conjurer  gets  rabbits  from  a hat.  Social- 
ism abolishes  property,  abolishes  the  family, 
and  the  rest.  The  method,  Mr.  Wells  contin- 
ues, is  always  the  same : It  is  to  assume  that 
whatever  the  socialist  postulates  as  desirable 
is  wanted  without  limit  of  qualification,  — for 
socialist  read  pluralist  and  the  parallel  holds 
good, — it  is  to  imagine  that  whatever  pro- 
posal is  made  by  him  is  to  be  carried  out  by 
uncontrolled  monomaniacs,  and  so  to  make  a 
picture  of  the  socialist  dream  which  can  be  pre- 
sented to  the  simple-minded  person  in  doubt 
— ‘This  is  socialism’ — or  pluralism,  as  the 
case  may  be.  ‘Surely!  — surely!  you  don’t 
wyant  this!* 

How  often  have  I been  replied  to,  when  ex- 
pressing doubts  of  the  logical  necessity  of  the 
absolute,  of  flying  to  the  opposite  extreme : ‘But 
surely,  surely  there  must  be  some  connexion 
among  things!’  As  if  I must  necessarily  be 
an  uncontrolled  monomanic  insanely  denying 

78 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


any  connexion  whatever.  The  whole  question 
revolves  in  very  truth  about  the  word  ‘ some.’ 
Radical  empiricism  and  pluralism  stand  out 
for  the  legitimacy  of  the  notion  of  some:  each 
part  of  the  world  is  in  some  ways  connected,  in 
some  other  ways  not  connected  with  its  other 
parts,  and  the  ways  can  be  discriminated,  for 
many  of  them  are  obvious,  and  their  differences 
are  obvious  to  view.  Absolutism,  on  its  side, 
seems  to  hold  that  ‘some’  is  a category  ruin- 
ously infected  with  self-contradictoriness,  and 
that  the  only  categories  inwardly  consistent 
and  therefore  pertinent  to  reality  are  ‘ all  ’ and 
‘ none.’ 

The  question  runs  into  the  still  more  general 
one  with  which  Mr.  Bradley  and  later  writers  of 
the  monistic  school  have  made  us  abundantly 
familiar  — the  question,  namely,  whether  all 
the  relations  with  other  things,  possible  to  a 
being,  are  pre-included  in  its  intrinsic  nature 
and  enter  into  its  essence,  or  whether,  in  re- 
spect to  some  of  these  relations,  it  can  be  with- 
out reference  to  them,  and,  if  it  ever  does  enter 
into  them,  do  so  adventitiously  and  as  it  were 

79 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


by  an  after-thought.  This  is  the  great  question 
as  to  whether  ‘ external  ’ relations  can  exist. 
They  seem  to,  undoubtedly.  My  manuscript, 
for  example,  is  ‘ on  ’ the  desk.  The  relation  of 
being  ‘ on’  does  n’t  seem  to  implicate  or  involve 
in  any  way  the  inner  meaning  of  the  manu- 
script or  the  inner  structure  of  the  desk — these 
objects  engage  in  it  only  by  their  outsides,  it 
seems  only  a temporary  accident  in  their  re- 
spective histories.  Moreover,  the  ‘ on  ’ fails  to 
appear  to  our  senses  as  one  of  those  unintel- 
ligible ‘betweens’  that  have  to  be  separately 
hooked  on  the  terms  they  pretend  to  connect. 
All  this  innocent  sense-appearance,  however, 
we  are  told,  cannot  pass  muster  in  the  eyes  of 
reason.  It  is  a tissue  of  self-contradiction  which 
only  the  complete  absorption  of  the  desk  and 
the  manuscript  into  the  higher  unity  of  a more 
absolute  reality  can  overcome. 

The  reasoning  by  which  this  conclusion  is 
supported  is  too  subtle  and  complicated  to  be 
properly  dealt  with  in  a public  lecture,  and  you 
will  thank  me  for  not  inviting  you  to  consider 
it  at  all.13  I feel  the  more  free  to  pass  it  by  now 

80 


II.  MONISTIC  IDEALISM 


as  I think  that  the  cursory  account  of  the  ab- 
solutistic  attitude  which  I have  already  given  is 
sufficient  for  our  present  purpose,  and  that  my 
own  verdict  on  the  philosophy  of  the  absolute 
as  ‘not  proven’ — please  observe  that  I go  no 
farther  now — need  not  be  backed  by  argu- 
ment at  every  special  point.  Flanking  opera- 
tions are  less  costly  and  in  some  ways  more 
effective  than  frontal  attacks.  Possibly  you 
will  yourselves  think  after  hearing  my  remain- 
ing lectures  that  the  alternative  of  an  universe 
absolutely  rational  or  absolutely  irrational  is 
forced  and  strained,  and  that  a via  media  exists 
which  some  of  you  may  agree  with  me  is  to  be 
preferred.  Some  rationality  certainly  does  char- 
acterize our  universe ; and,  weighing  one  kind 
with  another,  we  may  deem  that  the  incomplete 
kinds  that  appear  are  on  the  whole  as  accept- 
able as  the  through-and-through  sort  of  ration- 
ality on  which  the  monistic  systematizers  insist. 

All  the  said  systematizers  who  have  written 
since  Hegel  have  owed  their  inspiration  largely 
to  him.  Even  when  they  have  found  no  use  for 
his  particular  triadic  dialectic,  they  have  drawn 

81 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


confidence  and  courage  from  his  authoritative 
and  conquering  tone.  I have  said  nothing  about 
Hegel  in  this  lecture,  so  I must  repair  the  omis- 
sion in  the  next. 


Ill 


HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 


LECTURE  III 


HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

Directly  or  indirectly,  that  strange  and  pow- 
erful genius  Hegel  has  done  more  to  strengthen 
idealistic  pantheism  in  thoughtful  circles  than 
all  other  influences  put  together.  I must  talk 
a little  about  him  before  drawing  my  final  con- 
clusions about  the  cogency  of  the  arguments 
for  the  absolute.  In  no  philosophy  is  the  fact 
that  a philosopher’s  vision  and  the  technique  he 
uses  in  proof  of  it  are  two  different  things  more 
palpably  evident  than  in  Hegel.  The  vision 
in  his  case  was  that  of  a world  in  which  rea- 
son holds  all  things  in  solution  and  accounts 
for  all  the  irrationality  that  superficially  ap- 
pears by  taking  it  up  as  a ‘moment’  into  itself. 
This  vision  was  so  intense  in  Hegel,  and  the 
tone  of  authority  with  which  he  spoke  from 
out  of  the  midst  of  it  was  so  weighty,  that  the 
impression  he  made  has  never  been  effaced. 
Once  dilated  to  the  scale  of  the  master’s  eye,  the 
disciples’  sight  could  not  contract  to  any  lesser 

85 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

prospect.  The  technique  which  Hegel  used  to 
prove  his  vision  was  the  so-called  dialectic 
method,  but  here  his  fortune  has  been  quite 
contrary.  Hardly  a recent  disciple  has  felt  his 
particular  applications  of  the  method  to  be 
satisfactory.  Many  have  let  them  drop  entirely, 
treating  them  rather  as  a sort  of  provisional 
stop-gap,  symbolic  of  what  might  some  day 
prove  possible  of  execution,  but  having  no  lit- 
eral cogency  or  value  now.  Yet  these  very 
same  disciples  hold  to  the  vision  itself  as  a 
revelation  that  can  never  pass  away.  The 
case  is  curious  and  worthy  of  our  study. 

It  is  still  more  curious  in  that  these  same 
disciples,  altho  they  are  usually  willing  to 
abandon  any  particular  instance  of  the  dialec- 
tic method  to  its  critics,  are  unshakably  sure 
that  in  some  shape  the  dialectic  method  is 
the  key  to  truth.  What,  then,  is  the  dialectic 
method  ? It  is  itself  a part  of  the  hegelian 
vision  or  intuition,  and  a part  that  finds  the 
strongest  echo  in  empiricism  and  common 
sense.  Great  injustice  is  done  to  Hegel  by 
treating  him  as  primarily  a reasoner.  He  is  in 

86 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

reality  a naively  observant  man,  only  beset 
with  a perverse  preference  for  the  use  of  tech- 
nical and  logical  jargon.  He  plants  himself  in 
the  empirical  flux  of  things  and  gets  the  im- 
pression of  what  happens.  His  mind  is  in  very 
truth  impressionistic ; and  his  thought,  when 
once  you  put  yourself  at  the  animating  centre 
of  it,  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  catch 
the  pulse  of  and  to  follow. 

Any  author  is  easy  if  you  can  catch  the  centre 
of  his  vision.  From  the  centre  in  Hegel  come 
those  towering  sentences  of  his  that  are  com- 
parable only  to  Luther’s,  as  where,  speaking  of 
the  ontological  proof  of  God’s  existence  from 
the  concept  of  him  as  the  ens  perfectissimum 
to  which  no  attribute  can  be  lacking,  he  says : 
‘It  would  be  strange  if  the  Notion,  the  very 
heart  of  the  mind,  or,  in  a word,  the  concrete 
totality  we  call  God,  were  not  rich  enough  to 
embrace  so  poor  a category  as  Being,  the  very 
poorest  and  most  abstract  of  all  — for  nothing 
can  be  more  insignificant  than  Being.’  But 
if  Hegel’s  central  thought  is  easy  to  catch,  his 
abominable  habits  of  speech  make  his  applica- 

87 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


tion  of  it  to  details  exceedingly  difficult  to  fol- 
low. His  passion  for  the  slipshod  in  the  way  of 
sentences,  his  unprincipled  playing  fast  and 
loose  with  terms ; his  dreadful  vocabulary, 
calling  what  completes  a thing  its  ‘ negation,’ 
for  example;  his  systematic  refusal  to  let  you 
know  whether  he  is  talking  logic  or  physics  or 
psychology,  his  whole  deliberately  adopted  pol- 
icy of  ambiguity  and  vagueness,  in  short:  all 
these  things  make  his  present-day  readers  wish 
to  tear  their  hair  — or  his  — out  in  despera- 
tion. Like  Byron’s  corsair,  he  has  left  a name 
‘ to  other  times,  linked  with  one  virtue  and  a 
thousand  crimes.’ 

The  virtue  was  the  vision,  which  was  really 
in  two  parts.  The  first  part  was  that  reason  is 
all-inclusive,  the  second  was  that  things  are 
‘ dialectic.’  Let  me  say  a word  about  this  sec- 
ond part  of  Hegel’s  vision. 

The  impression  that  any  naif  person  gets 
who  plants  himself  innocently  in  the  flux  of 
things  is  that  things  are  off  their  balance. 
Whatever  equilibriums  our  finite  experiences 
attain  to  are  but  provisional.  Martinique  vol- 

88 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

canoes  shatter  our  Wordsworthian  equilibrium 
with  nature.  Accidents,  either  moral,  mental, 
or  physical,  break  up  the  slowly  built-up  equi- 
libriums men  reach  in  family  life  and  in  their 
civic  and  professional  relations.  Intellectual 
enigmas  frustrate  our  scientific  systems,  and 
the  ultimate  cruelty  of  the  universe  upsets  our 
religious  attitudes  and  outlooks.  Of  no  special 
system  of  good  attained  does  the  universe 
recognize  the  value  as  sacred.  Down  it  tumbles, 
over  it  goes,  to  feed  the  ravenous  appetite  for 
destruction,  of  the  larger  system  of  history  in 
which  it  stood  for  a moment  as  a landing- 
place  and  stepping-stone.  This  dogging  of 
everything  by  its  negative,  its  fate,  its  undoing, 
this  perpetual  moving  on  to  something  future 
which  shall  supersede  the  present,  this  is  the 
hegelian  intuition  of  the  essential  provision- 
ally, and  consequent  unreality,  of  everything 
empirical  and  finite.  Take  any  concrete  finite 
thing  and  try  to  hold  it  fast.  You  cannot,  for 
so  held,  it  proves  not  to  be  concrete  at  all,  but 
an  arbitrary  extract  or  abstract  which  you 
have  made  from  the  remainder  of  empirical 

89 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


reality.  The  rest  of  things  invades  and  over- 
flows both  it  and  you  together,  and  defeats  your 
rash  attempt.  Any  partial  view  whatever  of  the 
w'orld  tears  the  part  out  of  its  relations,  leaves 
out  some  truth  concerning  it,  is  untrue  of 
it,  falsifies  it.  The  full  truth  about  anything 
involves  more  than  that  thing.  In  the  end 
nothing  less  than  the  whole  of  everything  can 
be  the  truth  of  anything  at  all. 

Taken  so  far,  and  taken  in  the  rough,  Hegel 
is  not  only  harmless,  but  accurate.  There  is  a 
dialectic  movement  in  things,  if  such  it  please 
you  to  call  it,  one  that  the  whole  constitution 
of  concrete  life  establishes;  but  it  is  one  that 
can  be  described  and  accounted  for  in  terms 
of  the  pluralistic  vision  of  things  far  more  nat- 
urally than  in  the  monistic  terms  to  which 
Hegel  finally  reduced  it.  Pluralistic  empiri- 
cism knows  that  everything  is  in  an  environ- 
ment, a surrounding  world  of  other  things, 
and  that  if  you  leave  it  to  work  there  it  will 
inevitably  meet  with  friction  and  opposition 
from  its  neighbors.  Its  rivals  and  enemies  will 
destroy  it  unless  it  can  buy  them  off  by  com  - 

90 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 


promising  some  part  of  its  original  preten- 
sions. 

But  Hegel  saw  this  undeniable  character- 
istic of  the  world  we  live  in  in  a non-empirical 
light.  Let  the  mental  idea  of  the  thing  work 
in  your  thought  all  alone,  he  fancied,  and  just 
the  same  consequences  will  follow.  It  will  be 
negated  by  the  opposite  ideas  that  dog  it,  and 
can  survive  only  by  entering,  along  with  them, 
into  some  kind  of  treaty.  This  treaty  will  be 
an  instance  of  the  so-called  ‘ higher  synthesis  ’ 
of  everything  with  its  negative;  and  Hegel’s 
originality  lay  in  transporting  the  process  from 
the  sphere  of  percepts  to  that  of  concepts  and 
treating  it  as  the  universal  method  by  which 
every  kind  of  life,  logical,  physical,  or  psycho- 
logical, is  mediated.  Not  to  the  sensible  facts 
as  such,  then,  did  Hegel  point  for  the  secret  of 
what  keeps  existence  going,  but  rather  to  the 
conceptual  way  of  treating  them.  Concepts 
were  not  in  his  eyes  the  static  self-contained 
things  that  previous  logicians  had  supposed, 
butw7ere  germinative,  and  passed  beyond  them- 
selves into  each  other  by  what  he  called  their 

91 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


immanent  dialectic.  In  ignoring  each  other  as 
they  do,  they  virtually  exclude  and  deny  each 
other,  he  thought,  and  thus  in  a manner  in- 
troduce each  other.  So  the  dialectic  logic,  ac- 
cording to  him,  had  to  supersede  the  ‘logic  of 
identity’  in  which,  since  Aristotle,  all  Europe 
had  been  brought  up. 

This  view  of  concepts  is  Hegel’s  revolution- 
ary performance ; but  so  studiously  vague  and 
ambiguous  are  all  his  expressions  of  it  that  one 
can  hardly  tell  whether  it  is  the  concepts  as 
such,  or  the  sensible  experiences  and  elements 
conceived,  that  Hegel  really  means  to  work 
wTith.  The  only  thing  that  is  certain  is  that 
whatever  you  may  say  of  his  procedure,  some 
one  will  accuse  you  of  misunderstanding  it. 
I make  no  claim  to  understanding  it,  I treat  it 
merely  impressionistically. 

So  treating  it,  I regret  that  he  should  have 
called  it  by  the  name  of  logic.  Clinging  as  he 
did  to  the  vision  of  a really  living  world,  and 
refusing  to  be  content  with  a chopped-up  intel- 
lectualist  picture  of  it,  it  is  a pity  that  he 
should  have  adopted  the  very  word  that  intel- 

92 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

lectualism  had  already  pre-empted.  But  he 
clung  fast  to  the  old  rationalist  contempt  for 
the  immediately  given  world  of  sense  and  all 
its  squalid  particulars,  and  never  tolerated  the 
notion  that  the  form  of  philosophy  might  be 
empirical  only.  His  own  system  had  to  be  a 
product  of  eternal  reason,  so  the  word  ‘logic,’ 
with  its  suggestions  of  coercive  necessity,  was 
the  only  word  he  could  find  natural.  Pie  pre- 
tended therefore  to  be  using  the  a 'priori 
method,  and  to  be  working  by  a scanty  equip- 
■ment  of  ancient  logical  terms — position,  nega- 
tion, reflection,  universal,  particular,  individ- 
ual, and  the  like.  But  what  he  really  worked 
by  was  his  own  empirical  perceptions,  which 
exceeded  and  overflowed  his  miserably  in- 
sufficient logical  categories  in  every  instance 
of  their  use. 

What  he  did  with  the  category  of  negation 
was  his  most  original  stroke.  The  orthodox 
opinion  is  that  you  can  advance  logically 
through  the  field  of  concepts  only  by  going 
from  the  same  to  the  same.  Hegel  felt  deeply 
the  sterility  of  this  law  of  conceptual  thought ; 

93 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


he  saw  that  in  a fashion  negation  also  relates 
things ; and  he  had  the  brilliant  idea  of  tran- 
scending the  ordinary  logic  by  treating  advance 
from  the  different  to  the  different  as  if  it  were 
also  a necessity  of  thought.  ‘The  so-called 
maxim  of  identity,’  he  wrote,  ‘is  supposed  to 
be  accepted  by  the  consciousness  of  every  one. 
But  the  language  which  such  a law  demands, 
“ a planet  is  a planet,  magnetism  is  magnetism, 
mind  is  mind,”  deserves  to  be  called  silliness. 
No  mind  either  speaks  or  thinks  or  forms  con- 
ceptions in  accordance  with  this  law,  and  no 
existence  of  any  kind  whatever  conforms  to  it. 
We  must  never  view  identity  as  abstract  iden- 
tity, to  the  exclusion  of  all  difference.  That  is 
the  touchstone  for  distinguishing  all  bad  phi- 
losophy from  what  alone  deserves  the  name 
of  philosophy.  If  thinking  were  no  more  than 
registering  abstract  identities,  it  would  be  a 
most  superfluous  performance.  Things  and 
concepts  are  identical  with  themselves  only 
in  so  far  as  at  the  same  time  they  involve 
distinction.’ 1 

The  distinction  that  Hegel  has  in  mind  here 
94 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

is  naturally  in  the  first  instance  distinction  from 
all  other  things  or  concepts.  But  in  his  hands 
this  quickly  develops  into  contradiction  of 
them,  and  finally,  reflected  back  upon  itself, 
into  self-contradiction ; and  the  immanent  self- 
contradictoriness of  all  finite  concepts  thence- 
forth becomes  the  propulsive  logical  force  that 
moves  the  world.2  ‘Isolate  a thing  from  all 
its  relations,’  says  Dr.  Edward  Caird,3  ex- 
pounding Hegel,  ‘ and  try  to  assert  it  by  itself ; 
you  find  that  it  has  negated  itself  as  well  as  its 
relations.  The  thing  in  itself  is  nothing.’  Or, 
to  quote  Hegel’s  own  words:  ‘When  we  sup- 
pose an  existent  A,  and  another,  B,  B is  at  first 
defined  as  the  other.  But  A is  just  as  much  the 
other  of  B.  Both  are  others  in  the  same  fash- 
ion. . . . “ Other”  is  the  other  by  itself,  there- 
fore the  other  of  every  other,  consequently  the 
other  of  itself,  the  simply  unlike  itself,  the  self- 
negator, the  self-alterer,’  etc.4  Hegel  writes 
elsewhere:  ‘The  finite,  as  implicitly  other  than 
what  it  is,  is  forced  to  surrender  its  own  imme- 
diate or  natural  being,  and  to  turn  suddenly 
into  its  opposite.  . . . Dialectic  is  the  universal 

95 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


and  irresistible  power  before  which  nothing 
can  stay.  . . . Summum  jus,  summa  injuria 
— to  drive  an  abstract  right  to  excess  is  to 
commit  injustice.  . . . Extreme  anarchy  and 
extreme  despotism  lead  to  one  another.  Pride 
comes  before  a fall.  Too  much  wit  outwits 
itself.  Joy  brings  tears,  melancholy  a sardonic 
smile.’ 5 To  which  one  well  might  add  that 
most  human  institutions,  by  the  purely  tech- 
nical and  professional  manner  in  which  they 
come  to  be  administered,  end  by  becoming 
obstacles  to  the  very  purposes  which  their 
founders  had  in  view. 

Once  catch  well  the  knack  of  this  scheme  of 
thought  and  you  are  lucky  if  you  ever  get  away 
from  it.  It  is  all  you  can  see.  Let  any  one  pro- 
nounce anything,  and  your  feeling  of  a contra- 
diction being  implied  becomes  a habit,  almost 
a motor  habit  in  some  persons  who  symbolize 
by  a stereotyped  gesture  the  position,  sublation, 
and  final  reinstatement  involved.  If  you  say 
‘two’  or  ‘many,’  your  speech  bewrayeth  you, 
for  the  very  name  collects  them  into  one.  If  you 
express  doubt,  your  expression  contradicts  its 

96 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 


content,  for  the  doubt  itself  is  not  doubted  but 
affirmed.  If  you  say  ‘ disorder,’  what  is  that  but 
a certain  bad  kind  of  order  ? if  you  say  ‘ indeter- 
mination,’ you  are  determining  just  that.  If  you 
say  ‘ nothing  but  the  unexpected  happens,’  the 
unexpected  becomes  what  you  expect.  If  you 
say  ‘ all  things  are  relative,’  to  what  is  the  all 
of  them  itself  relative  ? If  you  say  ‘ no  more,’ 
you  have  said  more  already,  by  implying  a 
region  in  which  no  more  is  found;  to  know 
a limit  as  such  is  consequently  already  to  have 
got  beyond  it;  and  so  forth,  throughout  as 
many  examples  as  one  cares  to  cite. 

Whatever  you  posit  appears  thus  as  one- 
sided, and  negates  its  other,  which,  being 
equally  one-sided,  negates  it;  and,  since  this 
situation  remains  unstable,  the  two  contradic- 
tory terms  have  together,  according  to  Hegel, 
to  engender  a higher  truth  of  which  they  both 
appear  as  indispensable  members,  mutually 
mediating  aspects  of  that  higher  concept  or 
situation  in  thought. 

Every  higher  total,  however  provisional  and 
relative,  thus  reconciles  the  contradictions 


97 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

which  its  parts,  abstracted  from  it,  prove  im- 
plicitly to  contain.  Rationalism,  you  remem- 
ber, is  what  I called  the  way  of  thinking  that 
methodically  subordinates  parts  to  wholes,  so 
Hegel  here  is  rationalistic  through  and  through. 
The  only  whole  by  which  all  contradictions 
are  reconciled  is  for  him  the  absolute  whole  of 
wholes,  the  all-inclusive  reason  to  which  Hegel 
himself  gave  the  name  of  the  absolute  Idea,  but 
which  I shall  continue  to  call  ‘the  absolute’ 
purely  and  simply,  as  I have  done  hitherto. 

Empirical  instances  of  the  way  in  which 
higher  unities  reconcile  contradictions  are  in- 
numerable, so  here  again  Hegel’s  vision,  taken 
merely  impressionistically,  agrees  with  count- 
less facts.  Somehow  life  does,  out  of  its  total 
resources,  find  ways  of  satisfying  opposites  at 
once.  This  is  precisely  the  paradoxical  aspect 
which  much  of  our  civilization  presents.  Peace 
we  secure  by  armaments,  liberty  by  laws  and 
constitutions;  simplicity  and  naturalness  are 
the  consummate  result  of  artificial  breeding 
and  training ; health,  strength,  and  wealth  are 
increased  only  by  lavish  use,  expense,  and  wear. 

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III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 


Our  mistrust  of  mistrust  engenders  our  com- 
mercial system  of  credit;  our  tolerance  of 
anarchistic  and  revolutionary  utterances  is  the 
only  way  of  lessening  their  danger ; our  charity 
has  to  say  no  to  beggars  in  order  not  to 
defeat  its  own  desires ; the  true  epicurean  has 
to  observe  great  sobriety ; the  way  to  certainty 
lies  through  radical  doubt ; virtue  signifies  not 
innocence  but  the  knowledge  of  sin  and  its 
overcoming;  by  obeying  nature,  we  command 
her,  etc.  The  ethical  and  the  religious  life  are 
full  of  such  contradictions  held  in  solution. 
You  hate  your  enemy  ? — well,  forgive  him, 
and  thereby  heap  coals  of  fire  on  his  head ; to 
realize  yourself,  renounce  yourself ; to  save  your 
soul,  first  lose  it;  in  short,  die  to  live. 

From  such  massive  examples  one  easily  gen- 
eralizes Hegel’s  vision.  Roughly,  his  ‘dialec- 
tic’ picture  is  a fair  account  of  a good  deal  of 
the  world.  It  sounds  paradoxical,  but  when- 
ever you  once  place  yourself  at  the  point  of  view 
of  any  higher  synthesis,  you  see  exactly  how  it 
does  in  a fashion  take  up  opposites  into  itself. 
As  an  example,  consider  the  conflict  between 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


our  carnivorous  appetites  and  hunting  instincts 
and  the  sympathy  with  animals  which  our 
refinement  is  bringing  in  its  train.  We  have 
found  how  to  reconcile  these  opposites  most 
effectively  by  establishing  game-laws  and  close 
seasons  and  by  keeping  domestic  herds.  The 
creatures  preserved  thus  are  preserved  for  the 
sake  of  slaughter,  truly,  but  if  not  preserved 
for  that  reason,  not  one  of  them  would  be 
alive  at  all.  Their  will  to  live  and  our  will  to 
kill  them  thus  harmoniously  combine  in  this 
peculiar  higher  synthesis  of  domestication. 

Merely  as  a reporter  of  certain  empirical 
aspects  of  the  actual,  Hegel,  then,  is  great  and 
true.  But  he  aimed  at  being  something  far 
greater  than  an  empirical  reporter,  so  I must 
say  something  about  that  essential  aspect  of 
his  thought.  Hegel  was  dominated  by  the 
notion  of  a truth  that  should  prove  incontro- 
vertible, binding  on  every  one,  and  certain, 
which  should  be  the  truth,  one,  indivisible, 
eternal,  objective,  and  necessary,  to  which  all 
our  particular  thinking  must  lead  as  to  its  con- 
summation. This  is  the  dogmatic  ideal,  the 

100 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

postulate,  uncritioised,  undoubted,  and  unchal- 
lenged, of  all  rationalizers  in  philosophy.  ‘ 7 
have  never  doubted ,’  a recent  Oxford  writer 
says,  that  truth  is  universal  and  single  and 
timeless,  a single  content  or  significance,  one 
and  whole  and  complete.8  Advance  in  think- 
ing, in  the  hegelian  universe,  has,  in  short,  to 
proceed  by  the  apodictic  words  must  be  rather 
than  by  those  inferior  hypothetic  wmrds  may 
be,  which  are  all  that  empiricists  can  use. 

Nowt  Hegel  found  that  his  idea  of  an  imma- 
nent movement  through  the  field  of  concepts 
by  way  of  ‘ dialectic  ’ negation  played  most  beau- 
tifully into  the  hands  of  this  rationalistic  de- 
mand for  something  absolute  and  inconcussum 
in  the  way  of  truth.  It  is  easy  to  see  how.  If 
you  affirm  anything,  for  example  that  A is,  and 
simply  leave  the  matter  thus,  you  leave  it  at  the 
mercy  of  any  one  who  may  supervene  and  say 
‘not  A,  but  B is.’  If  he  does  say  so,  your  state- 
ment does  n’t  refute  him,  it  simply  contradicts 
him,  just  as  his  contradicts  you.  The  only  way 
of  making  your  affirmation  about  A self -secur- 
ing is  by  getting  it  into  a form  which  will  by 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

implication  negate  all  possible  negations  in 
advance.  The  mere  absence  of  negation  is  not 
enough ; it  must  be  present,  but  present  with  its 
fangs  drawn.  What  you  posit  as  A must  already 
have  cancelled  the  alternative  or  made  it  in- 
nocuous, by  having  negated  it  in  advance. 
Double  negation  is  the  only  form  of  affirmation 
that  fully  plays  into  the  hands  of  the  dogmatic 
ideal.  Simply  and  innocently  affirmative  state- 
ments are  good  enough  for  empiricists,  but 
unfit  for  rationalist  use,  lying  open  as  they  do 
to  every  accidental  contradictor,  and  exposed 
to  every  puff  of  doubt.  The  final  truth  must 
be  something  to  which  there  is  no  imaginable 
alternative,  because  it  contains  all  its  possible 
alternatives  inside  of  itself  as  moments  already 
taken  account  of  and  overcome.  Whatever 
involves  its  own  alternatives  as  elements  of 
itself  is,  in  a phrase  often  repeated,  its  ‘own 
other,’  made  so  by  the  methode  der  absoluten 
negativitiit. 

Formally,  this  scheme  of  an  organism  of  truth 
that  has  already  fed  as  it  were  on  its  own  liabil- 
ity to  death,  so  that,  death  once  dead  for  it, 

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III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

there ’s  no  more  dying  then,  is  the  very  fulfil- 
ment of  the  rationalistic  aspiration.  That  one 
and  only  whole,  with  all  its  parts  involved  in  it, 
negating  and  making  one  another  impossible  if 
abstracted  and  taken  singly,  but  necessitating 
and  holding  one  another  in  place  if  the  whole 
of  them  be  taken  integrally,  is  the  literal  ideal 
sought  after ; it  is  the  very  diagram  and  picture 
of  that  notion  of  the  truth  with  no  outlying 
alternative,  to  which  nothing  can  be  added,  nor 
from  it  anything  withdrawn,  and  all  variations 
from  which  are  absurd,  which  so  dominates 
the  human  imagination.  Once  we  have  taken 
in  the  features  of  this  diagram  that  so  success- 
fully solves  the  world-old  problem,  the  older 
ways  of  proving  the  necessity  of  judgments 
cease  to  give  us  satisfaction.  Hegel’s  way  we 
think  must  be  the  right  way.  The  true  must  be 
essentially  the  self-reflecting  self-contained  re- 
current, that  which  secures  itself  by  including 
its  own  other  and  negating  it ; that  makes  a 
spherical  system  with  no  loose  ends  hanging 
out  for  foreignness  to  get  a hold  upon ; that  is 
forever  rounded  in  and  closed,  not  strung  along 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


rectilinearly  and  open  at  its  ends  like  that  uni- 
verse of  simply  collective  or  additive  form 
which  Hegel  calls  the  world  of  the  bad  infinite, 
and  which  is  all  that  empiricism,  starting  with 
simply  posited  single  parts  and  elements,  is 
ever  able  to  attain  to. 

No  one  can  possibly  deny  the  sublimity  of 
this  hegelian  conception.  It  is  surely  in  the 
grand  style,  if  there  be  such  a thing  as  a grand 
style  in  philosophy.  For  us,  however,  it  re- 
mains, so  far,  a merely  formal  and  diagram- 
matic conception;  for  with  the  actual  content 
of  absolute  truth,  as  Hegel  materially  tries  to 
set  it  forth,  few  disciples  have  been  satisfied, 
and  I do  not  propose  to  refer  at  all  to  the  con- 
creter  parts  of  his  philosophy.  The  main  thing 
now  is  to  grasp  the  generalized  vision,  and  feel 
the  authority  of  the  abstract  scheme  of  a state- 
ment self-secured  by  involving  double  negation. 
Absolutists  who  make  no  use  of  Hegel’s  own 
technique  are  really  working  by  his  method. 
You  remember  the  proofs  of  the  absolute 
which  I instanced  in  my  last  lecture,  Lotze’s 
and  Royce’s  proofs  by  reductio  ad  absurdum,  to 

104 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 


the  effect  that  any  smallest  connexion  rashly 
supposed  in  things  will  logically  work  out  into 
absolute  union,  and  any  minimal  disconnexion 
into  absolute  disunion,  — these  are  really  argu- 
ments framed  on  the  hegelian  pattern.  The 
truth  is  that  which  you  implicitly  affirm  in  the 
very  attempt  to  deny  it ; it  is  that  from  which 
every  variation  refutes  itself  by  proving  self- 
contradictory. This  is  the  supreme  insight 
of  rationalism,  and  to-day  the  best  must-be's 
of  rationalist  argumentation  are  but  so  many 
attempts  to  communicate  it  to  the  hearer. 

Thus,  you  see,  my  last  lecture  and  this  lecture 
make  connexion  again  and  we  can  consider 
Hegel  and  the  other  absolutists  to  be  support- 
ing the  same  system.  The  next  point  I wish 
to  dwell  on  is  the  part  played  by  what  I have 
called  vicious  intellectualism  in  this  wonderful 
system’s  structure. 

Rationalism  in  general  thinks  it  gets  the  ful- 
ness of  truth  by  turning  away  from  sensation 
to  conception,  conception  obviously  giving  the 
more  universal  and  immutable  picture.  Intel- 
lectualism in  the  vicious  sense  I have  already 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


defined  as  the  habit  of  assuming  that  a 
concept  excludes  from  any  reality  conceived 
by  its  means  everything  not  included  in  the 
concept’s  definition.  I called  such  intellectu- 
alism  illegitimate  as  I found  it  used  in  Lotze’s, 
Royce’s,  and  Bradley’s  proofs  of  the  absolute 
(which  absolute  I consequently  held  to  be  non- 
proven by  their  arguments) , and  I left  off  by 
asserting  my  own  belief  that  a pluralistic  and 
incompletely  integrated  universe,  describable 
only  by  the  free  use  of  the  word  ‘ some,’  is  a 
legitimate  hypothesis. 

Now  Hegel  himself,  in  building  up  his  method 
of  double  negation,  offers  the  vividest  possible 
example  of  this  vice  of  intellectualism.  Every 
idea  of  a finite  thing  is  of  course  a concept  of 
that  thing  and  not  a concept  of  anything  else. 
But  Hegel  treats  this  not  being  a concept  of 
anything  else  as  if  it  were  equivalent  to  the  con- 
cept of  anything  else  not  being , or  in  other  words 
as  if  it  were  a denial  or  negation  of  everything 
else.  Then,  as  the  other  things,  thus  implicitly 
contradicted  by  the  thing  first  conceived,  also  by 
the  same  law  contradict  it,  the  pulse  of  dialec- 

106 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

tic  commences  to  beat  and  the  famous  triads 
begin  to  grind  out  the  cosmos.  If  any  one  finds 
the  process  here  to  be  a luminous  one,  he  must 
be  left  to  the  illumination,  he  must  remain  an 
undisturbed  hegelian.  What  others  feel  as  the 
intolerable  ambiguity,  verbosity,  and  unscrupu- 
lousness of  the  master’s  way  of  deducing  things, 
he  will  probably  ascribe — since  divine  oracles 
are  notoriously  hard  to  interpret — ■ to  the  ‘dif- 
ficulty’ that  habitually  accompanies  profun- 
dity. For  my  own  part,  there  seems  something 
grotesque  and  saugrenu  in  the  pretension  of  a 
style  so  disobedient  to  the  first  rules  of  sound 
communication  between  minds,  to  be  the  au- 
thentic mother-tongue  of  reason,  and  to  keep 
step  more  accurately  than  any  other  style  does 
with  the  absolute’s  own  ways  of  thinking.  I 
do  not  therefore  take  Hegel’s  technical  appa- 
ratus seriously  at  all.  I regard  him  rather  as 
one  of  those  numerous  original  seers  who  can 
never  learn  how  to  articulate.  His  would-be 
coercive  logic  counts  for  nothing  in  my  eyes; 
but  that  does  not  in  the  least  impugn  the  phi- 
losophic importance  of  his  conception  of  the 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


absolute,  if  we  take  it  merely  hypothetically  as 
one  of  the  great  types  of  cosmic  vision. 

Taken  thus  hypothetically,  I wish  to  discuss 
it  briefly.  But  before  doing  so  I must  call  your 
attention  to  an  odd  peculiarity  in  the  hegelian 
procedure.  The  peculiarity  is  one  which  will 
come  before  us  again  for  a final  judgment  in 
my  seventh  lecture,  so  at  present  I only  note 
it  in  passing.  Hegel,  you  remember,  considers 
that  the  immediate  finite  data  of  experience 
are  ‘untrue’  because  they  are  not  their  own 
others.  They  are  negated  by  what  is  external 
to  them.  The  absolute  is  true  because  it  and 
it  only  has  no  external  environment,  and  has 
attained  to  being  its  own  other.  (These  words 
sound  queer  enough,  but  those  of  you  who 
know  something  of  Hegel’s  text  will  follow 
them.)  Granting  his  premise  that  to  be  true 
a thing  must  in  some  sort  be  its  own  other, 
everything  hinges  on  whether  he  is  right  in 
holding  that  the  several  pieces  of  finite  expe- 
rience themselves  cannot  be  said  to  be  in  any 
wise  their  own  others.  When  conceptually  or 
intellectualistically  treated,  they  of  course  can- 

108 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 


not  be  their  own  others.  Every  abstract  con- 
cept as  such  excludes  what  it  does  n’t  include, 
and  if  such  concepts  are  adequate  substitutes 
for  reality’s  concrete  pulses,  the  latter  must 
square  themselves  with  intellectualistic  logic, 
and  no  one  of  them  in  any  sense  can  claim  to 
be  its  own  other.  If,  however,  the  conceptual 
treatment  of  the  flow  of  reality  should  prove 
for  any  good  reason  to  be  inadequate  and  to 
have  a practical  rather  than  a theoretical  or 
speculative  value,  then  an  independent  empiri- 
cal look  into  the  constitution  of  reality’s  pulses 
might  possibly  show  that  some  of  them  are 
their  own  others,  and  indeed  are  so  in  the  self- 
same sense  in  which  the  absolute  is  maintained 
to  be  so  by  Hegel.  When  we  come  to  my  sixth 
lecture,  on  Professor  Bergson,  I shall  in  effect 
defend  this  very  view,  strengthening  my  thesis 
by  his  authority.  I am  unwilling  to  say  any- 
thing more  about  the  point  at  this  time,  and 
what  I have  just  said  of  it  is  only  a sort  of  sur- 
veyor’s note  of  where  our  present  position  lies 
in  the  general  framework  of  these  lectures. 

Let  us  turn  now  at  last  to  the  great  question 
109 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

of  fact,  Does  the  absolute  exist  or  not?  to  which 
all  our  previous  discussion  has  been  prelim- 
inary. I may  sum  up  that  discussion  by  saying 
that  whether  there  really  be  an  absolute  or  not, 
no  one  makes  himself  absurd  or  self-contradic- 
tory by  doubting  or  denying  it.  The  charges 
of  self-contradiction,  where  they  do  not  rest 
on  purely  verbal  reasoning,  rest  on  a vicious 
intellectualism.  I will  not  recapitulate  my 
criticisms.  I will  simply  ask  you  to  change 
the  venue,  and  to  discuss  the  absolute  now  as 
if  it  were  only  an  open  hypothesis.  As  such, 
is  it  more  probable  or  more  improbable  ? 

But  first  of  all  I must  parenthetically  ask  you 
to  distinguish  the  notion  of  the  absolute  care- 
fully from  that  of  another  object  with  which 
it  is  liable  to  become  heedlessly  entangled. 
That  other  object  is  the  ‘God’  of  common 
people  in  their  religion,  and  the  creator-God 
of  orthodox  Christian  theology.  Only  thor- 
oughgoing monists  or  pantheists  believe  in  the 
absolute.  The  God  of  our  popular  Christianity 
is  but  one  member  of  a pluralistic  system. 
He  and  we  stand  outside  of  each  other,  just  as 

110 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

the  devil,  the  saints,  and  the  angels  stand  out- 
side of  both  of  us.  I can  hardly  conceive  of 
anything  more  different  from  the  absolute  than 
the  God,  say,  of  David  or  of  Isaiah.  That  God 
is  an  essentially  finite  being  in  the  cosmos,  not 
with  the  cosmos  in  him,  and  indeed  he  has  a 
very  local  habitation  there,  and  very  one-sided 
local  and  personal  attachments.  If  it  should 
prove  probable  that  the  absolute  does  not  exist, 
it  will  not  follow  in  the  slightest  degree  that  a 
God  like  that  of  David,  Isaiah,  or  Jesus  may 
not  exist,  or  may  not  be  the  most  important  ex- 
istence in  the  universe  for  us  to  acknowledge. 
I pray  you,  then,  not  to  confound  the  two  ideas 
as  you  listen  to  the  criticisms  I shall  have  to 
proffer.  I hold  to  the  finite  God,  for  reasons 
which  I shall  touch  on  in  the  seventh  of  these 
lectures ; but  I hold  that  his  rival  and  compet- 
itor — I feel  almost  tempted  to  say  his  enemy 
— the  absolute,  is  not  only  not  forced  on  us  by 
logic,  but  that  it  is  an  improbable  hypothesis. 

The  great  claim  made  for  the  absolute  is  that 
by  supposing  it  we  make  the  world  appear 
more  rational.  Any  hypothesis  that  does  that 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

will  always  be  accepted  as  more  probably  true 
than  an  hypothesis  that  makes  the  world  appear 
irrational.  Men  are  once  for  all  so  made  that 
they  prefer  a rational  world  to  believe  in  and 
to  live  in.  But  rationality  has  at  least  four 
dimensions,  intellectual,  sesthetieal,  moral,  and 
practical ; and  to  find  a world  rational  to  the 
maximal  degree  in  all  these  respects  simulta- 
neously is  no  easy  matter.  Intellectually,  the 
world  of  mechanical  materialism  is  the  most 
rational,  for  we  subject  its  events  to  mathe- 
matical calculation.  But  the  mechanical  world 
is  ugly,  as  arithmetic  is  ugly,  and  it  is  non- 
moral.  Morally,  the  theistic  world  is  rational 
enough,  but  full  of  intellectual  frustrations. 
The  practical  world  of  affairs,  in  its  turn,  so 
supremely  rational  to  the  politician,  the  military 
man,  or  the  man  of  conquering  business-faculty 
that  he  never  would  vote  to  change  the  type  of 
it,  is  irrational  to  moral  and  artistic  tempera- 
ments ; so  that  whatever  demand  for  rationality 
we  find  satisfied  by  a philosophic  hypothesis, 
we  are  liable  to  find  some  other  demand  for 
rationality  unsatisfied  by  the  same  hypothesis. 

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III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 


The  rationality  we  gain  in  one  coin  we  thus  pay 
for  in  another;  and  the  problem  accordingly 
seems  at  first  sight  to  resolve  itself  into  that  of 
getting  a conception  which  will  yield  the  largest 
balance  of  rationality  rather  than  one  which 
will  yield  perfect  rationality  of  every  descrip- 
tion. In  general,  it  may  be  said  that  if  a man’s 
conception  of  the  world  lets  loose  any  action 
in  him  that  is  easy,  or  any  faculty  which  he 
is  fond  of  exercising,  he  will  deem  it  rational 
in  so  far  forth,  be  the  faculty  that  of  com- 
puting, fighting,  lecturing,  classifying,  framing 
schematic  tabulations,  getting  the  better  end 
of  a bargain,  patiently  waiting  and  enduring, 
preaching,  joke-making,  or  what  you  like. 
Albeit  the  absolute  is  defined  as  being  neces- 
sarily an  embodiment  of  objectively  perfect 
rationality,  it  is  fair  to  its  english  advocates  to 
say  that  those  who  have  espoused  the  hypothe- 
sis most  concretely  and  seriously  have  usually 
avowed  the  irrationality  to  their  own  minds  of 
certain  elements  in  it. 

Probably  the  weightiest  contribution  to  our 
feeling  cf  the  rationality  of  the  universe  which 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

the  notion  of  the  absolute  brings  is  the  assur- 
ance that  however  disturbed  the  surface  may 
be,  at  bottom  all  is  well  with  the  cosmos  — 
central  peace  abiding  at  the  heart  of  endless 
agitation.  This  conception  is  rational  in  many 
ways,  beautiful  aesthetically,  beautiful  intellec- 
tually (could  we  only  follow  it  into  detail) , and 
beautiful  morally,  if  the  enjoyment  of  security 
can  be  accounted  moral.  Practically  it  is  less 
beautiful ; for,  as  we  saw  in  our  last  lecture,  in 
representing  the  deepest  reality  of  the  world 
as  static  and  without  a history,  it  loosens  the 
world’s  hold  upon  our  sympathies  and  leaves 
the  soul  of  it  foreign.  Nevertheless  it  does  give 
peace,  and  that  kind  of  rationality  is  so  para- 
mountly  demanded  by  men  that  to  the  end  of 
time  there  will  be  absolutists,  men  who  choose 
belief  in  a static  eternal,  rather  than  admit  that 
the  finite  world  of  change  and  striving,  even 
with  a God  as  one  of  the  strivers,  is  itself  eter- 
nal. For  such  minds  Professor  Royce’s  words 
will  always  be  the  truest : ‘ The  very  presence 
of  ill  in  the  temporal  order  is  the  condition  of 
the  perfection  of  the  eternal  order.  ...  We 

114 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

long  for  the  absolute  only  in  so  far  as  in  us  the 
absolute  also  longs,  and  seeks  through  our  very 
temporal  striving,  the  peace  that  is  nowhere  in 
time,  but  only,  and  yet  absolutely,  in  eternity. 
Were  there  no  longing  in  time  there  would  be 
no  peace  in  eternity.  . . . God  \i.  e.  the  abso- 
lute] who  here  in  me  aims  at  what  I now  tem- 
porally miss,  not  only  possesses  in  the  eternal 
world  the  goal  after  which  I strive,  but  comes 
to  possess  it  even  through  and  because  of 
my  sorrow.  Through  this  my  tribulation  the 
absolute  triumph  then  is  won.  ...  In  the 
absolute  I am  fulfilled.  Yet  my  very  fulfilment 
demands  and  therefore  can  transcend  this  sor- 
row.’7 Royce  is  particularly  felicitous  in  his 
ability  to  cite  parts  of  finite  experience  to 
which  he  finds  his  picture  of  this  absolute  expe- 
rience analogous.  But  it  is  hard  to  portray  the 
absolute  at  all  without  rising  into  what  might 
be  called  the  ‘inspired’  style  of  language  — 
I use  the  word  not  ironically,  but  prosaically 
and  descriptively,  to  designate  the  only  liter- 
ary form  that  goes  with  the  kind  of  emotion 
that  the  absolute  arouses.  One  can  follow  the 

115 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


pathway  of  reasoning  soberly  enough,8  but  the 
picture  itself  has  to  be  effulgent.  This  admira- 
ble faculty  of  transcending,  whilst  inwardly 
preserving,  every  contrariety,  is  the  absolute’s 
characteristic  form  of  rationality.  We  are  but 
syllables  in  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  ; if  the  whole 
sentence  is  divine,  each  syllable  is  absolutely 
what  it  should  be,  in  spite  of  all  appearances. 
In  making  up  the  balance  for  or  against  abso- 
lutism, this  emotional  value  weights  heavily 
the  credit  side  of  the  account. 

The  trouble  is  that  we  are  able  to  see  so 
little  into  the  positive  detail  of  it,  and  that  if 
once  admitted  not  to  be  coercively  proven  by 
the  intellectualist  arguments,  it  remains  only 
a hypothetic  possibility. 

On  the  debit  side  of  the  account  the  absolute, 
taken  seriously,  and  not  as  a mere  name  for  our 
right  occasionally  to  drop  the  strenuous  mood 
and  take  a moral  holiday,  introduces  all  those 
tremendous  irrationalities  into  the  universe 
which  a frankly  pluralistic  theism  escapes, 
but  which  have  been  flung  as  a reproach  at 
every  form  of  monistic  theism  or  pantheism. 

116 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

It  introduces  a speculative  ‘problem  of  evil* 
namely,  and  leaves  us  wondering  why  the  per- 
fection of  the  absolute  should  require  just  such 
particular  hideous  forms  of  life  as  darken  the 
day  for  our  human  imaginations.  If  they  were 
forced  on  it  by  something  alien,  and  to  ‘over- 
come ’ them  the  absolute  had  still  to  keep  hold 
of  them,  we  could  understand  its  feeling  of  tri- 
umph, though  we,  so  far  as  we  were  ourselves 
among  the  elements  overcome,  could  acqui- 
esce but  sullenly  in  the  resultant  situation,  and 
would  never  just  have  chosen  it  as  the  most 
rational  one  conceivable.  But  the  absolute  is 
represented  as  a being  without  environment, 
upon  which  nothing  alien  can  be  forced,  and 
which  has  spontaneously  chosen  from  within 
to  gi.^e  itself  the  spectacle  of  all  that  evil  rather 
than  a spectacle  with  less  evil  in  it.9  Its  per- 
fection is  represented  as  the  source  of  things, 
and  yet  the  first  effect  of  that  perfection  is  the 
tremendous  imperfection  of  all  finite  experi- 
ence. In  whatever  sense  the  word  ‘ rationality  ’ 
may  be  taken,  it  is  vain  to  contend  that  the 
impression  made  on  our  finite  minds  by  such 

117 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

a way  of  representing  things  is  altogether 
rational.  Theologians  have  felt  its  irrational- 
ity acutely,  and  the  ‘fall,’  the  predestination, 
and  the  election  which  the  situation  involves 
have  given  them  more  trouble  than  anything 
else  in  their  attempt  to  pantheize  Christianity. 
The  whole  business  remains  a puzzle,  both 
intellectually  and  morally. 

Grant  that  the  spectacle  or  world-romance 
offered  to  itself  by  the  absolute  is  in  the  abso- 
lute’s eyes  perfect.  Why  would  not  the  world 
be  more  perfect  by  having  the  affair  remain  in 
just  those  terms,  and  by  not  having  any  finite 
spectators  to  come  in  and  add  to  what  was 
perfect  already  their  innumerable  imperfect 
manners  of  seeing  the  same  spectacle  ? Sup- 
pose the  entire  universe  to  consist  of  one  superb 
copy  of  a book,  fit  for  the  ideal  reader.  Is 
that  universe  improved  or  deteriorated  by  hav- 
ing myriads  of  garbled  and  misprinted  separate 
leaves  and  chapters  also  created,  giving  false 
impressions  of  the  book  to  whoever  looks  at 
them  ? To  say  the  least,  the  balance  of  ration- 
ality is  not  obviously  in  favor  of  such  added 

118 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

mutilations.  So  this  question  becomes  urgent : 
Why,  the  absolute’s  own  total  vision  of  things 
being  so  rational,  was  it  necessary  to  com- 
minute it  into  all  these  coexisting  inferior 
fragmentary  visions  ? 

Leibnitz  in  his  theodicy  represents  God  as 
limited  by  an  antecedent  reason  in  things 
which  makes  certain  combinations  logically 
incompatible,  certain  goods  impossible.  He 
surveys  in  advance  all  the  universes  he  might 
create,  and  by  an  act  of  what  Leibnitz  calls  his 
antecedent  will  he  chooses  our  actual  world  as 
the  one  in  which  the  evil,  unhappily  necessary 
anyhow,  is  at  its  minimum.  It  is  the  best  of  all 
the  worlds  that  are  possible,  therefore,  but  by 
no  means  the  most  abstractly  desirable  world. 
Having  made  this  mental  choice,  God  next 
proceeds  to  what  Leibnitz  calls  his  act  of  con- 
sequent or  decretory  will:  he  says  ‘ Fiat ’ and 
the  world  selected  springs  into  objective  being, 
with  all  the  finite  creatures  in  it  to  suffer  from 
its  imperfections  without  sharing  in  its  crea- 
tor’s atoning  vision. 

Lotze  has  made  some  penetrating  remarks 
119 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


on  this  conception  of  Leibnitz’s,  and  they  ex- 
actly fall  in  with  what  I say  of  the  absolutist 
conception.  The  world  projected  out  of  the 
creative  mind  by  the  fiat,  and  existing  in  de- 
tachment from  its  author,  is  a sphere  of  being 
where  the  parts  realize  themselves  only  singly. 
If  the  divine  value  of  them  is  evident  only 
when  they  are  collectively  looked  at,  then,  Lotze 
rightly  says,  the  world  surely  becomes  poorer 
and  not  richer  for  God’s  utterance  of  the  fiat. 
He  might  much  better  have  remained  con- 
tented with  his  merely  antecedent  choice  of  the 
scheme,  without  follow7 ing  it  up  by  a creative 
decree.  The  scheme  as  such  wras  admirable ; 
it  could  only  lose  by  being  translated  into 
reality.10  Why,  I similarly  ask,  should  the 
absolute  ever  have  lapsed  from  the  perfection 
of  its  own  integral  experience  of  things,  and 
refracted  itself  into  all  our  finite  experiences  ? 

It  is  but  fair  to  recent  english  absolutists 
to  say  that  many  of  them  have  confessed  the 
imperfect  rationality  of  the  absolute  from  this 
point  of  view.  Mr.  McTaggart,  for  example, 
writes : ‘ Does  not  our  very  failure  to  perceive 

120 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

the  perfection  of  the  universe  destroy  it  ? . . . 
In  so  far  as  we  do  not  see  the  perfection  of  the 
universe,  we  are  not  perfect  ourselves.  And  as 
we  are  parts  of  the  universe,  that  cannot  be 
perfect.’11 

And  Mr.  Joachim  finds  just  the  same  diffi- 
culty. Calling  the  hypothesis  of  the  absolute 
by  the  name  of  the  ‘coherence  theory  of  truth,’ 
he  calls  the  problem  of  understanding  how  the 
complete  coherence  of  all  things  in  the  absolute 
should  involve  as  a necessary  moment  in  its 
self-maintenance  the  self-assertion  of  the  finite 
minds,  a self-assertion  which  in  its  extreme 
form  is  error,  — he  calls  this  problem,  I say, 
an  insoluble  puzzle.  If  truth  be  the  universal 
fons  et  origo,  how  does  error  slip  in  ? ‘ The  co- 
herence theory  of  truth,’  he  concludes,  ‘may 
thus  be  said  to  suffer  shipwreck  at  the  very 
entrance  of  the  harbor.’12  Yet  in  spite  of  this 
rather  bad  form  of  irrationality,  Mr.  Joachim 
stoutly  asserts  his  ‘ immediate  certainty  ’ 13  of  the 
theory  shipwrecked,  the  correctness  of  which 
he  says  he  has  ‘never  doubted.’  This  can- 
did confession  of  a fixed  attitude  of  faith  in 

121 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

the  absolute,  which  even  one’s  own  criticisms 
and  perplexities  fail  to  disturb,  seems  to  me 
very  significant.  Not  only  empiricists,  but 
absolutists  also,  would  all,  if  they  were  as 
candid  as  this  author,  confess  that  the  prime 
thing  in  their  philosophy  is  their  vision  of  a 
truth  possible,  which  they  then  employ  their 
reasoning  to  convert,  as  best  it  can,  into  a cer- 
tainty or  probability. 

I can  imagine  a believer  in  the  absolute  re- 
torting at  this  point  that  he  at  any  rate  is  not 
dealing  with  mere  probabilities,  but  that  the 
nature  of  things  logically  requires  the  multi- 
tudinous erroneous  copies,  and  that  therefore 
the  universe  cannot  be  the  absolute’s  book 
alone.  For,  he  will  ask,  is  not  the  absolute  de- 
fined as  the  total  consciousness  of  everything 
that  is  ? Must  not  its  field  of  view  consist  of 
parts  ? And  what  can  the  parts  of  a total  con- 
sciousness be  unless  they  be  fractional  con- 
sciousnesses ? Our  finite  minds  must  therefore 
coexist  with  the  absolute  mind.  We  are  its 
constituents,  and  it  cannot  live  without  us. — 
But  if  any  one  of  you  feels  tempted  to  retort 

122 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 


in  this  wise,  let  me  remind  you  that  you  are 
frankly  employing  pluralistic  weapons,  and 
thereby  giving  up  the  absolutist  cause.  The 
notion  that  the  absolute  is  made  of  constituents 
on  which  its  being  depends  is  the  rankest  em- 
piricism. The  absolute  as  such  has  objects,  not 
constituents,  and  if  the  objects  develop  self- 
hoods upon  their  own  several  accounts,  those 
selfhoods  must  be  set  down  as  facts  additional 
to  the  absolute  consciousness,  and  not  as  ele- 
ments implicated  in  its  definition.  The  abso- 
lute is  a rationalist  conception.  Rationalism 
goes  from  wholes  to  parts,  and  always  assumes 
wholes  to  be  self-sufficing.14 

My  conclusion,  so  far,  then,  is  this,  that 
altho  the  hypothesis  of  the  absolute,  in  yielding 
a certain  kind  of  religious  peace,  performs  a 
most  important  rationalizing  function,  it  never- 
theless, from  the  intellectual  point  of  view, 
remains  decidedly  irrational.  The  ideally  per- 
fect whole  is  certainly  that  whole  of  which 
the  'parts  also  are  perfect — if  we  can  depend 
on  logic  for  anything,  we  can  depend  on  it  for 
that  definition.  The  absolute  is  defined  as  the 


123 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


ideally  perfect  whole,  yet  most  of  its  parts,  if 
not  all,  are  admittedly  imperfect.  Evidently 
the  conception  lacks  internal  consistency,  and 
yields  us  a problem  rather  than  a solution.  It 
creates  a speculative  puzzle,  the  so-called  mys- 
tery of  evil  and  of  error,  from  which  a plural- 
istic metaphysic  is  entirely  free. 

In  any  pluralistic  metaphysic,  the  problems 
that  evil  presents  are  practical,  not  speculative. 
Not  why  evil  should  exist  at  all,  but  how  we 
can  lessen  the  actual  amount  of  it,  is  the  sole 
question  we  need  there  consider.  ‘ God,’  in  the 
religious  life  of  ordinary  men,  is  the  name  not 
of  the  whole  of  things,  heaven  forbid,  but  only 
of  the  ideal  tendency  in  things,  believed  in  as 
a superhuman  person  who  calls  us  to  co-op- 
erate in  his  purposes,  and  who  furthers  ours 
if  they  are  worthy.  He  works  in  an  external 
environment,  has  limits,  and  has  enemies. 
When  John  Mill  said  that  the  notion  of  God’s 
omnipotence  must  be  given  up,  if  God  is  to 
be  kept  as  a religious  object,  he  was  surely 
accurately  right;  yet  so  prevalent  is  the  lazy 
monism  that  idly  haunts  the  region  of  God’s 

124 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 


name,  that  so  simple  and  truthful  a saying  was 
generally  treated  as  a paradox:  God,  it  was 
said,  could  not  be  finite.  I believe  that  the  only 
God  worthy  of  the  name  must  be  finite,  and  I 
shall  return  to  this  point  in  a later  lecture.  If 
the  absolute  exist  in  addition  — and  the  hypo- 
thesis must,  in  spite  of  its  irrational  features, 
still  be  left  open — then  the  absolute  is  only  the 
wider  cosmic  whole  of  w7hich  our  God  is  but 
the  most  ideal  portion,  and  which  in  the  more 
usual  human  sense  is  hardly  to  be  termed  a 
religious  hypothesis  at  all.  ‘ Cosmic  emotion  ’ is 
the  better  name  for  the  reaction  it  may  awaken. 

Observe  that  all  the  irrationalities  and  puz- 
zles which  the  absolute  gives  rise  to,  and  from 
which  the  finite  God  remains  free,  are  due  to 
the  fact  that  the  absolute  has  nothing,  abso- 
lutely nothing,  outside  of  itself.  The  finite 
God  whom  I contrast  with  it  may  conceivably 
have  almost  nothing  outside  of  himself ; he 
may  already  have  triumphed  over  and  ab- 
sorbed all  but  the  minutest  fraction  of  the 
universe;  but  that  fraction,  however  small, 
reduces  him  to  the  status  of  a relative  being, 

125 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


and  in  principle  the  universe  is  saved  from  all 
the  irrationalities  incidental  to  absolutism. 
The  only  irrationality  left  would  be  the  irra- 
tionality of  which  pluralism  as  such  is  accused, 
and  of  this  I hope  to  say  a word  more  later. 

I have  tired  you  with  so  many  subtleties  in 
this  lecture  that  I will  add  only  two  other 
counts  to  my  indictment. 

First,  then,  let  me  remind  you  that  the  abso- 
lute is  useless  for  deductive  purposes.  It  gives 
us  absolute  safety  if  you  will,  but  it  is  com- 
patible with  every  relative  danger.  You  cannot 
enter  the  phenomenal  world  with  the  notion 
of  it  in  your  grasp,  and  name  beforehand 
any  detail  which  you  are  likely  to  meet  there. 
Whatever  the  details  of  experience  may  prove 
to  be,  after  the  fact  of  them  the  absolute  will 
adopt  them.  It  is  an  hypothesis  that  functions 
retrospectively  only,  not  prospectively.  That, 
whatever  it  may  be,  will  have  been  in  point 
of  fact  the  sort  of  world  which  the  absolute 
was  pleased  to  offer  to  itself  as  a spectacle. 

Again,  the  absolute  is  always  represented 
126 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 

idealistically,  as  the  all-knower.  Thinking  this 
view  consistently  out  leads  one  to  frame  an 
almost  ridiculous  conception  of  the  absolute 
mind,  owing  to  the  enormous  mass  of  unprofit- 
able information  which  it  would  then  seem 
obliged  to  carry.  One  of  the  many  reductiones 
ad  absurdum  of  pluralism  by  which  idealism 
thinks  it  proves  the  absolute  One  is  as  follows : 
Let  there  be  many  facts ; but  since  on  idealist 
principles  facts  exist  only  by  being  known,  the 
many  facts  will  therefore  mean  many  knowers. 
But  that  there  are  so  many  knowers  is  itself 
a fact,  which  in  turn  requires  its  knower,  so 
the  one  absolute  knower  has  eventually  to  be 
brought  in.  All  facts  lead  to  him.  If  it  be  a 
fact  that  this  table  is  not  a chair,  not  a rhi- 
noceros, not  a logarithm,  not  a mile  away  from 
the  door,  not  worth  five  hundred  pounds  ster- 
ling, not  a thousand  centuries  old,  the  abso- 
lute must  even  now  be  articulately  aware  of  all 
these  negations.  Along  with  what  everything 
is  it  must  also  be  conscious  of  everything  which 
it  is  not.  This  infinite  atmosphere  of  explicit 
negativity — observe  that  it  has  to  be  explicit — 

127 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


around  everything  seems  to  us  so  useless  an 
encumbrance  as  to  make  the  absolute  still  more 
foreign  to  our  sympathy.  Furthermore,  if  it  be 
a fact  that  certain  ideas  are  silly,  the  absolute 
has  to  have  already  thought  the  silly  ideas  to 
establish  them  in  silliness.  The  rubbish  in  its 
mind  would  thus  appear  easily  to  outweigh 
in  amount  the  more  desirable  material.  One 
would  expect  it  fairly  to  burst  with  such  an 
obesity,  plethora,  and  superfoetation  of  useless 
information.15 

I will  spare  you  further  objections.  The 
sum  of  it  all  is  that  the  absolute  is  not  forced 
on  our  belief  by  logic,  that  it  involves  features 
of  irrationality  peculiar  to  itself,  and  that 
a thinker  to  w7hom  it  does  not  come  as  an 
‘immediate  certainty’  (to  use  Mr.  Joachim’s 
words),  is  in  no  way  bound  to  treat  it  as  any- 
thing but  an  emotionally  rather  sublime  hypo- 
thesis. As  such,  it  might,  with  all  its  defects, 
be,  on  account  of  its  peace-conferring  power 
and  its  formal  grandeur,  more  rational  than 
anything  else  in  the  field.  But  meanwhile  the 
strung-along  unfinished  world  in  time  is  its 

128 


III.  HEGEL  AND  HIS  METHOD 


rival : reality  MAY  exist  in  distributive  form,  in 
the  shape  not  of  an  all  but  of  a set  of  eaches, 
just  as  it  seems  to — this  is  the  anti-absolutist 
hypothesis.  Prima  facie  there  is  this  in  favor 
of  the  eaches,  that  they  are  at  any  rate  real 
enough  to  have  made  themselves  at  least  ap- 
pear to  every  one,  whereas  the  absolute  has  as 
yet  appeared  immediately  to  only  a few  mys- 
tics, and  indeed  to  them  very  ambiguously. 
The  advocates  of  the  absolute  assure  us  that 
any  distributive  form  of  being  is  infected  and 
undermined  by  self-contradiction.  If  we  are 
unable  to  assimilate  their  arguments,  and  we 
have  been  unable,  the  only  course  we  can  take, 
it  seems  to  me,  is  to  let  the  absolute  bury  the 
absolute,  and  to  seek  reality  in  more  promising 
directions,  even  among  the  details  of  the  finite 
and  the  immediately  given. 

If  these  words  of  mine  sound  in  bad  taste 
to  some  of  you,  or  even  sacrilegious,  I am 
sorry.  Perhaps  the  impression  may  be  miti- 
gated by  what  I have  to  say  in  later  lectures. 


IV 


CONCERNING  FECHNER 


LECTURE  IV 


CONCERNING  FECHNER 

The  prestige  of  the  absolute  has  rather  crum- 
bled in  our  hands.  The  logical  proofs  of  it  miss 
fire ; the  portraits  which  its  best  court-painters 
show  of  it  are  featureless  and  foggy  in  the 
extreme;  and,  apart  from  the  cold  comfort 
of  assuring  us  that  with  it  all  is  well,  and  that 
to  see  that  all  is  well  with  us  also  we  need  only 
rise  to  its  eternal  point  of  view,  it  yields  us 
no  relief  whatever.  It  introduces,  on  the  con- 
trary, into  philosophy  and  theology  certain 
poisonous  difficulties  of  which  but  for  its  intru- 
sion we  never  should  have  heard. 

But  if  we  drop  the  absolute  out  of  the  world, 
must  we  then  conclude  that  the  world  contains 
nothing  better  in  the  way  of  consciousness  than 
our  consciousness  ? Is  our  whole  instinctive 
belief  in  higher  presences,  our  persistent  inner 
turning  towards  divine  companionship,  to  count 
for  nothing  ? Is  it  but  the  pathetic  illusion  of 
beings  with  incorrigibly  social  and  imaginative 
minds  ? 


133 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

Such  a negative  conclusion  would,  I believe, 
be  desperately  hasty,  a sort  of  pouring  out  of 
the  child  with  the  bath.  Logically  it  is  possible 
to  believe  in  superhuman  beings  without  iden- 
tifying them  with  the  absolute  at  all.  The  treaty 
of  offensive  and  defensive  alliance  which  cer- 
tain groups  of  the  Christian  clergy  have  recently 
made  with  our  transcendentalist  philosophers 
seems  to  me  to  be  based  on  a well-meaning  but 
baleful  mistake.  Neither  the  Jehovah  of  the 
old  testament  nor  the  heavenly  father  of  the 
new  has  anything  in  common  with  the  abso- 
lute except  that  they  are  all  three  greater  than 
man ; and  if  you  say  that  the  notion  of  the  ab- 
solute is  what  the  gods  of  Abraham,  of  David, 
and  of  Jesus,  after  first  developing  into  each 
other,  were  inevitably  destined  to  develop  into 
in  more  reflective  and  modern  minds,  I reply 
that  although  in  certain  specifically  philoso- 
phical minds  this  may  have  been  the  case,  in 
minds  more  properly  to  be  termed  religious 
the  development  has  followed  quite  another 
path.  The  whole  history  of  evangelical  Chris- 
tianity is  there  to  prove  it.  I propose  in  these 

134 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 


lectures  to  plead  for  that  other  line  of  develop- 
ment. To  set  the  doctrine  of  the  absolute  in  its 
proper  framework,  so  that  it  shall  not  fill 
the  whole  welkin  and  exclude  all  alternative 
possibilities  of  higher  thought  — as  it  seems  to 
do  for  many  students  who  approach  it  with  a 
limited  previous  acquaintance  with  philosophy 
— I will  contrast  it  with  a system  which,  ab- 
stractly considered,  seems  at  first  to  have  much 
in  common  with  absolutism,  but  which,  when 
taken  concretely  and  temperamentally,  really 
stands  at  the  opposite  pole.  I refer  to  the  phi- 
losophy of  Gustav  Theodor  Fechner,  a writer 
but  little  known  as  yet  to  English  readers,  but 
destined,  I am  persuaded,  to  wield  more  and 
more  influence  as  time  goes  on. 

It  is  the  intense  concreteness  of  Fechner,  his 
fertility  of  detail,  which  fills  me  with  an  admi- 
ration which  I should  like  to  make  this  audi- 
ence share.  Among  the  philosophic  cranks  of 
my  acquaintance  in  the  past  was  a lady  all  the 
tenets  of  whose  system  I have  forgotten  except 
one.  Had  she  been  born  in  the  Ionian  Archi- 
pelago some  three  thousand  years  ago,  that  one 

135 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

doctrine  would  probably  have  made  her  name 
sure  of  a place  in  every  university  curriculum 
and  examination  paper.  The  world,  she  said, 
is  composed  of  only  two  elements,  the  Thick, 
namely,  and  the  Thin.  No  one  can  deny  the 
truth  of  this  analysis,  as  far  as  it  goes  (though 
in  the  light  of  our  contemporary  knowledge  of 
nature  it  has  itself  a rather  ‘thin’  sound),  and 
it  is  nowhere  truer  than  in  that  part  of  the  world 
called  philosophy.  I am  sure,  for  example,  that 
many  of  you,  listening  to  what  poor  account  I 
have  been  able  to  give  of  transcendental  ideal- 
ism, have  received  an  impression  of  its  argu- 
ments being  strangely  thin,  and  of  the  terms  it 
leaves  us  with  being  shiveringly  thin  wrappings 
for  so  thick  and  burly  a world  as  this.  Some 
of  you  of  course  will  charge  the  thinness  to  my 
exposition  ; but  thin  as  that  has  been,  I believe 
the  doctrines  reported  on  to  have  been  thinner. 
From  Green  to  Haldane  the  absolute  proposed 
to  us  to  straighten  out  the  confusions  of  the 
thicket  of  experience  in  which  our  life  is  passed 
remains  a pure  abstraction  which  hardly  any 
one  tries  to  make  a whit  concreter.  If  we  open 

136 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

Green,  we  get  nothing  but  the  transcendental 
ego  of  apperception  (Kant’s  name  for  the  fact 
that  to  be  counted  in  experience  a thing  has  to 
be  witnessed) , blown  up  into  a sort  of  timeless 
soap-bubble  large  enough  to  mirror  the  whole 
universe.  Nature,  Green  keeps  insisting,  con- 
sists only  in  relations,  and  these  imply  the  ac- 
tion of  a mind  that  is  eternal ; a self-distinguish- 
ing consciousness  which  itself  escapes  from  the 
relations  by  which  it  determines  other  things. 
Present  to  whatever  is  in  succession,  it  is  not 
in  succession  itself.  If  we  take  the  Cairds,  they 
tell  us  little  more  of  the  principle  of  the  uni- 
verse — it  is  always  a return  into  the  identity 
of  the  self  from  the  difference  of  its  objects. 
It  separates  itself  from  them  and  so  becomes 
conscious  of  them  in  their  separation  from  one 
another,  while  at  the  same  time  it  binds  them 
together  as  elements  in  one  higher  self-con- 
sciousness. 

This  seems  the  very  quintessence  of  thin- 
ness ; and  the  matter  hardly  grows  thicker  w7hen 
we  gather,  after  enormous  amounts  of  reading, 
that  the  great  enveloping  self  in  question  is 

137 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

absolute  reason  as  such,  and  that  as  such  it 
is  characterized  by  the  habit  of  using  certain 
jejune  ‘categories’  with  which  to  perform  its 
eminent  relating  work.  The  whole  active  ma- 
terial of  natural  fact  is  tried  out,  and  only  the 
barest  intellectualistic  formalism  remains. 

Hegel  tried,  as  we  saw,  to  make  the  system 
concreter  by  making  the  relations  between 
things  ‘ dialectic,’  but  if  we  turn  to  those  who 
use  his  name  most  worshipfully,  we  find  them 
giving  up  all  the  particulars  of  his  attempt,  and 
simply  praising  his  intention  — much  as  in 
our  manner  we  have  praised  it  ourselves.  Mr. 
Haldane,  for  example,  in  his  wonderfully  clever 
Gifford  lectures,  praises  Hegel  to  the  skies,  but 
what  he  tells  of  him  amounts  to  little  more  than 
this,  that  ‘the  categories  in  which  the  mind 
arranges  its  experiences,  and  gives  meaning  to 
them,  the  universals  in  which  the  particulars  are 
grasped  in  the  individual,  are  a logical  chain, 
in  which  the  first  presupposes  the  last,  and  the 
last  is  its  presupposition  and  its  truth.’  He 
hardly  tries  at  all  to  thicken  this  thin  logical 
scheme.  He  says  indeed  that  absolute  mind  in 

138 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

itself,  and  absolute  mind  in  its  hetereity  or  other- 
ness, under  the  distinction  which  it  sets  up  of 
itself  from  itself,  have  as  their  real  prius  abso- 
lute mind  in  synthesis ; and,  this  being  absolute 
mind's  true  nature,  its  dialectic  character  must 
show  itself  in  such  concrete  forms  as  Goethe’s 
and  Wordsworth’s  poetry,  as  well  as  in  religious 
forms.  ‘The  nature  of  God,  the  nature  of  ab- 
solute mind,  is  to  exhibit  the  triple  movement 
of  dialectic,  and  so  the  nature  of  God  as  pre- 
sented in  religion  must  be  a triplicity,  a trinity.’ 
But  beyond  thus  naming  Goethe  and  Words- 
worth and  establishing  the  trinity,  Mr.  Hal- 
dane’s Hegelianism  carries  us  hardly  an  inch 
into  the  concrete  detail  of  the  world  we  actually 
inhabit. 

Equally  thin  is  Mr.  Taylor,  both  in  his  prin- 
ciples and  in  their  results.  Following  Mr.  Brad- 
ley, he  starts  by  assuring  us  that  reality  cannot 
be  self-contradictory,  but  to  be  related  to  any- 
thing really  outside  of  one’s  self  is  to  be  self- 
contradictory,  so  the  ultimate  reality  must  be 
a single  all-inclusive  systematic  whole.  Yet  all 
he  can  say  of  this  wTole  at  the  end  of  his  excel- 

139 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


lently  written  book  is  that  the  notion  of  it  ‘ can 
make  no  addition  to  our  information  and  can 
of  itself  supply  no  motives  for  practical  en- 
deavor.’ 

Mr.  McTaggart  treats  us  to  almost  as  thin 
a fare.  ‘The  main  practical  interest  of  Hegel’s 
philosophy,’  he  says,  ‘ is  to  be  found  in  the  ab- 
stract certainty  which  the  logic  gives  us  that  all 
reality  is  rational  and  righteous,  even  when  we 
cannot  see  in  the  least  how  it  is  so.  . . . Not 
that  it  shows  us  how  the  facts  around  us  are 
good,  not  that  it  shows  us  how  we  can  make 
them  better,  but  that  it  proves  that  they,  like 
other  reality,  are  sub  specie  eternitatis,  perfectly 
good,  and  sub  specie  temporis , destined  to  be- 
come perfectly  good.’ 

Here  again,  no  detail  whatever,  only  the 
abstract  certainty  that  whatever  the  detail  may 
prove  to  be,  it  will  be  good.  Common  non-dia- 
lectical  men  have  already  this  certainty  as  a 
result  of  the  generous  vital  enthusiasm  about 
the  universe  with  which  they  are  born.  The 
peculiarity  of  transcendental  philosophy  is  its 
sovereign  contempt  for  merely  vital  functions 

140 


IY.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 


like  enthusiasm,  and  its  pretension  to  turn  our 
simple  and  immediate  trusts  and  faiths  into  the 
form  of  logically  mediated  certainties,  to  ques- 
tion which  would  be  absurd.  But  the  whole 
basis  on  which  Mr.  McTaggart’s  own  certainty 
so  solidly  rests,  settles  down  into  the  one  nut- 
shell of  an  assertion  into  which  he  puts  Hegel’s 
gospel,  namely,  that  in  every  bit  of  experi- 
ence and  thought,  however  finite,  the  whole  of 
reality  (the  absolute  idea,  as  Hegel  calls  it)  is 
‘implicitly  present.’ 

This  indeed  is  Hegel’s  vision,  and  Hegel 
thought  that  the  details  of  his  dialectic  proved 
its  truth.  But  disciples  who  treat  the  details  of 
the  proof  as  unsatisfactory  and  yet  cling  to  the 
vision,  are  surely,  in  spite  of  their  pretension  to 
a more  rational  consciousness,  no  better  than 
common  men  with  their  enthusiasms  or  delib- 
erately adopted  faiths.  We  have  ourselves  seen 
some  of  the  weakness  of  the  monistic  proofs. 
Mr.  McTaggart  picks  plenty  of  holes  of  his  own 
in  Hegel’s  logic,  and  finally  concludes  that  ‘ all 
true  philosophy  must  be  mystical,  not  indeed 
in  its  methods  but  in  its  final  conclusions,’ 


141 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


which  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  the  rationalistic 
methods  leave  us  in  the  lurch,  in  spite  of  all 
their  superiority,  and  that  in  the  end  vision 
and  faith  must  eke  them  out.  But  how  abstract 
and  thin  is  here  the  vision,  to  sav  nothing  of  the 
faith ! The  whole  of  reality,  explicitly  absent 
from  our  finite  experiences,  must  nevertheless 
be  present  in  them  all  implicitly,  altho  no  one 
of  us  can  ever  see  how  — the  bare  word  ‘ im- 
plicit’ here  bearing  the  whole  pyramid  of  the 
monistic  system  on  its  slender  point.  Mr.  Joa- 
chim’s monistic  system  of  truth  rests  on  an  even 
slenderer  point. — ‘/  have  never  doubted ,’  he 
says,  ‘that  universal  and  timeless  truth  is  a 
single  content  or  significance,  one  and  whole 
and  complete,’  and  he  candidly  confesses  the 
failure  of  rationalistic  attempts  ‘to  raise  this 
immediate  certainty’  to  the  level  of  reflective 
knowledge.  There  is,  in  short,  no  mediation 
for  him  between  the  Truth  in  capital  letters 
and  all  the  little  ‘lower-case’  truths  — and 
errors  — which  life  presents.  The  psychologi- 
cal fact  that  he  never  has  ‘doubted  ’ is  enough. 

The  whole  monistic  pyramid,  resting  on 
142 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

points  as  thin  as  these,  seems  to  me  to  be  a 
machts'pruch,  a product  of  will  far  more  than 
one  of  reason.  'Unity  is  good,  therefore  things 
shall  cohere ; they  shall  be  one ; there  shall  be 
categories  to  make  them  one,  no  matter  what 
empirical  disjunctions  may  appear.  In  Hegel's 
own  writings,  the  shall-be  temper  is  ubiquitous 
and  towering;  it  overrides  verbal  and  logical 
resistances  alike.  Hegel’s  error,  as  Professor 
Royce  so  well  says,  ‘lay  not  in  introducing 
logic  into  passion,’  as  some  people  charge,  ‘but 
in  conceiving  the  logic  of  passion  as  the  only 
logic.  . . . He  is  [thus]  suggestive,’  Royce 
says,  ‘but  never  final.  His  system  as  a system 
has  crumbled,  but  his  vital  comprehension  of 
our  life  remains  forever.’ 1 

That  vital  comprehension  we  have  already 
seen.  It  is  that  there  is  a sense  in  which  real 
things  are  not  merely  their  own  bare  selves,  but 
may  vaguely  be  treated  as  also  their  own  oth- 
ers, and  that  ordinary  logic,  since  it  denies  this, 
must  be  overcome.  Ordinary  logic  denies  this 
because  it  substitutes  concepts  for  real  things, 
and  concepts  are  their  own  bare  selves  and 

143 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


nothing  else.  What  Royce  calls  Hegel’s  ‘sys- 
tem ’ was  Hegel’s  attempt  to  make  us  believe 
that  he  was  working  by  concepts  and  grinding 
out  a higher  style  of  logic,  when  in  reality  sen- 
sible experiences,  hypotheses,  and  passion  fur- 
nished him  with  all  his  results. 

What  I myself  may  mean  by  things  being 
their  own  others,  we  shall  see  in  a later  lecture. 
It  is  now  time  to  take  our  look  at  Fechner, 
whose  thickness  is  a refreshing  contrast  to 
the  thin,  abstract,  indigent,  and  threadbare 
appearance,  the  starving,  school-room  aspect, 
which  the  speculations  of  most  of  our  absolutist 
philosophers  present. 

There  is  something  really  weird  and  uncanny 
in  the  contrast  between  the  abstract  pretensions 
of  rationalism  and  what  rationalistic  methods 
concretely  can  do.  If  the  ‘ logical  prius  ’ of  our 
mind  were  really  the  ‘implicit  presence’  of  the 
whole  ‘concrete  universal,’  the  whole  of  rea- 
son, or  reality,  or  spirit,  or  the  absolute  idea, 
or  whatever  it  may  be  called,  in  all  our  finite 
thinking,  and  if  this  reason  worked  (for  ex- 
ample) by  the  dialectical  method,  does  n’t  it 

144 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

seem  odd  that  in  the  greatest  instance  of  ra- 
tionalization mankind  has  known,  in  ‘ science,’ 
namely,  the  dialectical  method  should  never 
once  have  been  tried  ? Not  a solitary  instance 
of  the  use  of  it  in  science  occurs  to  my  mind. 
Hypotheses,  and  deductions  from  these,  con- 
trolled by  sense-observations  and  analogies 
with  what  we  know  elsewhere,  are  to  be 
thanked  for  all  of  science’s  results. 

Fechner  used  no  methods  but  these  latter 
ones  in  arguing  for  his  metaphysical  conclu- 
sions about  reality  — but  let  me  first  rehearse 
a few  of  the  facts  about  his  life. 

Born  in  1801,  the  son  of  a poor  country 
pastor  in  Saxony,  he  lived  from  1817  to  1887, 
when  he  died,  seventy  years  therefore,  at  Leip- 
zig, a typical  gelehrter  of  the  old-fashioned  ger- 
man stripe.  His  means  were  always  scanty, 
so  his  only  extravagances  could  be  in  the  way 
of  thought,  but  these  were  gorgeous  ones.  He 
passed  his  medical  examinations  at  Leipzig 
University  at  the  age  of  twenty-one,  but  de- 
cided, instead  of  becoming  a doctor,  to  devote 
himself  to  physical  science.  It  was  ten  years 

145 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


before  he  was  made  professor  of  physics, 
although  he  soon  was  authorized  to  lecture. 
Meanwhile,  he  had  to  make  both  ends  meet, 
and  this  he  did  by  voluminous  literary  labors. 
He  translated,  for  example,  the  four  volumes 
of  Biot’s  treatise  on  physics,  and  the  six  of 
Thenard’s  work  on  chemistry,  and  took  care 
of  their  enlarged  editions  later.  He  edited  re- 
pertories of  chemistry  and  physics,  a pharma- 
ceutical journal,  and  an  encyclopaedia  in  eight 
volumes,  of  which  he  wrote  about  one  third. 
He  published  physical  treatises  and  experi- 
mental investigations  of  his  own,  especially  in 
electricity.  Electrical  measurements,  as  you 
know,  are  the  basis  of  electrical  science,  and 
Fechner’s  measurements  in  galvanism,  per- 
formed with  the  simplest  self-made  appara- 
tus, are  classic  to  this  day.  During  this  time 
he  also  published  a number  of  half-philo- 
sophical, half-humorous  writings,  which  have 
gone  through  several  editions,  under  the 
name  of  Dr.  Mises,  besides  poems,  literary 
and  artistic  essays,  and  other  occasional 
articles. 


146 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

But  overwork,  poverty,  and  an  eye-trouble 
produced  by  his  observations  on  after-images 
in  the  retina  (also  a classic  piece  of  investiga- 
tion) produced  in  Fechner,  then  about  thirty- 
eight  years  old,  a terrific  attack  of  nervous 
prostration  with  painful  hyperaesthesia  of  all 
the  functions,  from  which  he  suffered  three 
years,  cut  off  entirely  from  active  life.  Present- 
day  medicine  would  have  classed  poor  Fech- 
ner’s  malady  quickly  enough,  as  partly  a habit- 
neurosis,  but  its  severity  was  such  that  in  his 
day  it  was  treated  as  a visitation  incomprehen- 
sible in  its  malignity;  and  when  he  suddenly 
began  to  get  well,  both  Fechner  and  others 
treated  the  recovery  as  a sort  of  divine  miracle. 
This  illness,  bringing  Fechner  face  to  face  with 
inner  desperation,  made  a great  crisis  in  his 
life.  ‘Had  I not  then  clung  to  the  faith,’  he 
writes,  ‘that  clinging  to  faith  would  somehow 
or  other  work  its  reward,  so  hatte  ich  jene  zeit 
nicht  ausgehalten .’  His  religious  and  cosmo- 
logical faiths  saved  him  — thenceforward  one 
great  aim  with  him  was  to  work  out  and  com- 
municate these  faiths  to  the  world.  He  did  so 

147 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

on  the  largest  scale;  but  he  did  many  other 
things  too  ere  he  died. 

A book  on  the  atomic  theory,  classic  also; 
four  elaborate  mathematical  and  experimental 
volumes  on  what  he  called  psychophysics  — 
many  persons  consider  Fechner  to  have  prac- 
tically founded  scientific  psychology  in  the  first 
of  these  books ; a volume  on  organic  evolution, 
and  two  works  on  experimental  sesthetics,  in 
which  again  Fechner  is  considered  by  some 
judges  to  have  laid  the  foundations  of  a new 
science,  must  be  included  among  these  other 
performances.  Of  the  more  religious  and  phi- 
losophical wrorks,  I shall  immediately  give  a 
further  account. 

All  Leipzig  mourned  him  when  he  died,  for 
he  was  the  pattern  of  the  ideal  german  scholar, 
as  daringly  original  in  his  thought  as  he  was 
homely  in  his  life,  a modest,  genial,  laborious 
slave  to  truth  and  learning,  and  withal  the 
owner  of  an  admirable  literary  style  of  the 
vernacular  sort.  The  materialistic  generation, 
that  in  the  fifties  and  sixties  called  his  specula- 
tions fantastic,  had  been  replaced  by  one  with 

148 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 


greater  liberty  of  imagination,  and  a Preyer, 
a Wundt,  a Paulsen,  and  a Lasswitz  could 
now  speak  of  Fechner  as  their  master. 

His  mind  was  indeed  one  of  those  multitudi- 
nously  organized  cross-roads  of  truth  which 
are  occupied  only  at  rare  intervals  by  children 
of  men,  and  from  which  nothing  is  either  too 
far  or  too  near  to  be  seen  in  due  perspective. 
Patientest  observation,  exactest  mathematics, 
shrewdest  discrimination,  humanest  feeling, 
flourished  in  him  on  the  largest  scale,  with 
no  apparent  detriment  to  one  another.  He 
was  in  fact  a philosopher  in  the  ‘ great  ’ sense, 
altho  he  cared  so  much  less  than  most  phi- 
losophers care  for  abstractions  of  the  ‘thin’ 
order.  For  him  the  abstract  lived  in  the  con- 
crete, and  the  hidden  motive  of  all  he  did  was 
to  bring  what  he  called  the  daylight  view  of 
the  world  into  ever  greater  evidence,  that  day- 
light view  being  this,  that  the  whole  universe 
in  its  different  spans  and  wave-lengths,  exclu- 
sions and  envelopments,  is  everywhere  alive 
and  conscious.  It  has  taken  fifty  years  for  his 
chief  book,  ‘ Zend-avesta,’  to  pass  into  a sec- 

149 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

ond  edition  (1901).  ‘One  swallow,’  he  cheer- 
fully writes,  ‘does  not  make  a summer.  But 
the  first  swallow  would  not  come  unless  the 
summer  were  coming ; and  for  me  that  summer 
means  my  daylight  view  some  time  prevailing.’ 
The  original  sin,  according  to  Fechner,  of 
both  our  popular  and  our  scientific  thinking,  is 
our  inveterate  habit  of  regarding  the  spiritual 
not  as  the  rule  but  as  an  exception  in  the  midst 
of  nature.  Instead  of  believing  our  life  to  be 
fed  at  the  breasts  of  the  greater  life,  our  indi- 
viduality to  be  sustained  by  the  greater  individ- 
uality, which  must  necessarily  have  more  con- 
sciousness and  more  independence  than  all 
that  it  brings  forth,  we  habitually  treat  what- 
ever lies  outside  of  our  life  as  so  much  slag 
and  ashes  of  life  only;  or  if  we  believe  in  a 
Divine  Spirit,  we  fancy  him  on  the  one  side  as 
bodiless,  and  nature  as  soulless  on  the  other. 
What  comfort,  or  peace,  Fechner  asks,  can  come 
from  such  a doctrine  ? The  flowers  wither  at 
its  breath,  the  stars  turn  into  stone ; our  own 
body  grows  unworthy  of  our  spirit  and  sinks  to 
a tenement  for  carnal  senses  only.  The  book 

150 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

of  nature  turns  into  a volume  on  mechanics, 
in  which  whatever  has  life  is  treated  as  a 
sort  of  anomaly ; a great  chasm  of  separation 
yawns  between  us  and  all  that  is  higher  than 
ourselves ; and  God  becomes  a thin  nest  of  ab- 
stractions. , 

Fechner’s  great  instrument  for  vivifying  the 
daylight  view  is  analogy ; not  a rationalistic  ar- 
gument is  to  be  found  in  all  his  many  pages  — 
only  reasonings  like  those  which  men  continu- 
ally use  in  practical  life.  For  example:  My 
house  is  built  by  some  one,  the  world  too  is  built 
by  some  one.  The  world  is  greater  than  my 
house,  it  must  be  a greater  some  one  who  built 
the  world.  My  body  moves  by  the  influence  of 
my  feeling  and  will;  the  sun,  moon,  sea,  and 
wrind,  being  themselves  more  powerful,  move 
by  the  influence  of  some  more  powerful  feeling 
and  will.  I live  now,  and  change  from  one  day 
to  another ; I shall  live  hereafter,  and  change 
still  more,  etc. 

Bain  defines  genius  as  the  power  of  seeing 
analogies.  The  number  that  Fechner  could 
perceive  was  prodigious ; but  he  insisted  on  the 

151 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


differences  as  well.  Neglect  to  make  allowance 
for  these,  lie  said,  is  the  common  fallacy  in  ana- 
logical reasoning.  Most  of  us,  for  example,  rea- 
soning justly  that,  since  all  the  minds  we  know 
are  connected  with  bodies,  therefore  God’s 
mind  should  be  connected  with  a body,  proceed 
to  suppose  that  that  body  must  be  just  an  ani- 
mal body  over  again,  and  paint  an  altogether 
human  picture  of  God.  But  all  that  the  analogy 
comports  is  a body  — the  particular  features 
of  our  body  are  adaptations  to  a habitat  so  dif- 
ferent from  God’s  that  if  God  have  a physical 
body  at  all,  it  must  be  utterly  different  from  ours 
in  structure.  Throughout  his  writings  Fechner 
makes  difference  and  analogy  walk  abreast, 
and  by  his  extraordinary  power  of  noticing 
both,  he  converts  what  would  ordinarily  pass 
for  objections  to  his  conclusions  into  factors 
of  their  support. 

The  vaster  orders  of  mind  go  with  the  vaster 
orders  of  body.  The  entire  earth  on  which  we 
live  must  have,  according  to  Fechner,  its  own 
collective  consciousness.  So  must  each  sun, 
moon,  and  planet ; so  must  the  whole  solar  sys- 

152 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 


tem  have  its  own  wider  consciousness,  in  which 
the  consciousness  of  our  earth  plays  one  part. 
So  has  the  entire  starry  system  as  such  its  con- 
sciousness ; and  if  that  starry  system  be  not  the 
sum  of  all  that  is,  materially  considered,  then 
that  whole  system,  along  with  whatever  else 
may  be,  is  the  body  of  that  absolutely  total- 
ized consciousness  of  the  universe  to  which 
men  give  the  name  of  God. 

Speculatively  Fechner  is  thus  a monist  in  his 
theology ; but  there  is  room  in  his  universe  for 
every  grade  of  spiritual  being  between  man  and 
the  final  all-inclusive  God ; and  in  suggesting 
what  the  positive  content  of  all  this  super-hu- 
manity may  be,  he  hardly  lets  his  imagination 
fly  beyond  simple  spirits  of  the  planetary  order. 
The  earth-soul  he  passionately  believes  in ; he 
treats  the  earth  as  our  special  human  guardian 
angel ; we  can  pray  to  the  earth  as  men  pray 
to  their  saints ; but  I think  that  in  his  system, 
as  in  so  many  of  the  actual  historic  theologies, 
the  supreme  God  marks  only  a sort  of  limit  of 
enclosure  of  the  worlds  above  man.  He  is  left 
thin  and  abstract  in  his  majesty,  men  prefer- 

153 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


ring  to  carry  on  their  personal  transactions 
with  the  many  less  remote  and  abstract  mes- 
sengers and  mediators  whom  the  divine  order 
provides. 

I shall  ask  later  whether  the  abstractly  mo- 
nistic turn  which  Fechner’s  speculations  took 
was  necessitated  by  logic.  I believe  it  not  to 
have  been  required.  Meanwhile  let  me  lead 
you  a little  more  into  the  detail  of  his  thought. 
Inevitably  one  does  him  miserable  injustice  by 
summarizing  and  abridging  him.  For  altho  the 
type  of  reasoning  he  employs  is  almost  childlike 
for  simplicity,  and  his  bare  conclusions  can  be 
written  on  a single  page,  the  power  of  the  man 
is  due  altogether  to  the  profuseness  of  his  con- 
crete imagination,  to  the  multitude  of  the  points 
which  he  considers  successively,  to  the  cumu- 
lative effect  of  his  learning,  of  his  thorough- 
ness, and  of  the  ingenuity  of  his  detail,  to  his 
admirably  homely  style,  to  the  sincerity  with 
which  his  pages  glow,  and  finally  to  the  impres- 
sion he  gives  of  a man  who  doesn’t  live  at  sec- 
ond-hand, but  who  sees,  who  in  fact  speaks  as 
one  having  authority,  and  not  as  if  he  were 

154 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 


one  of  the  common  herd  of  professorial  philo- 
sophic scribes. 

Abstractly  set  down,  his  most  important 
conclusion  for  my  purpose  in  these  lectures  is 
that  the  constitution  of  the  world  is  identical 
throughout.  In  ourselves,  visual  consciousness 
goes  with  our  eyes,  tactile  consciousness  with 
our  skin.  But  altho  neither  skin  nor  eye  knows 
aught  of  the  sensations  of  the  other,  they  come 
together  and  figure  in  some  sort  of  relation  and 
combination  in  the  more  inclusive  conscious- 
ness which  each  of  us  names  his  self.  Quite 
similarly,  then,  says  Fechner,  we  must  suppose 
that  my  consciousness  of  myself  and  yours  of 
yourself,  altho  in  their  immediacy  they  keep 
separate  and  know  nothing  of  each  other,  are 
yet  known  and  used  together  in  a higher  con- 
sciousness, that  of  the  human  race,  say,  into 
which  they  enter  as  constituent  parts.  Simi- 
larly, the  whole  human  and  animal  kingdoms 
come  together  as  conditions  of  a conscious- 
ness of  still  wider  scope.  This  combines  in  the 
soul  of  the  earth  with  the  consciousness  of  the 
vegetable  kingdom,  which  in  turn  contributes 

155 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


its  share  of  experience  to  that  of  the  whole  solar 
system,  and  so  on  from  synthesis  to  synthesis 
and  height  to  height,  till  an  absolutely  univer- 
sal consciousness  is  reached. 

A vast  analogical  series,  in  which  the  basis 
of  the  analogy  consists  of  facts  directly  ob- 
servable in  ourselves. 

The  supposition  of  an  earth-consciousness 
meets  a strong  instinctive  prejudice  which 
Fechner  ingeniously  tries  to  overcome.  Man’s 
mind  is  the  highest  consciousness  upon  the 
earth,  we  think  — the  earth  itself  being  in  all 
ways  man’s  inferior.  How  should  its  con- 
sciousness, if  it  have  one,  be  superior  to  his  ? 

What  are  the  marks  of  superiority  which 
we  are  tempted  to  use  here  ? If  we  look  more 
carefully  into  them,  Fechner  points  out  that 
the  earth  possesses  each  and  all  of  them  more 
perfectly  than  we.  He  considers  in  detail  the 
points  of  difference  between  us,  and  shows 
them  all  to  make  for  the  earth’s  higher  rank. 
I will  touch  on  only  a few  of  these  points. 

One  of  them  of  course  is  independence  of 
other  external  beings.  External  to  the  earth 

156 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 


are  only  the  other  heavenly  bodies.  All  the 
things  on  which  we  externally  depend  for  life 
— air,  water,  plant  and  animal  food,  fellow 
men,  etc. — are  included  in  her  as  her  con- 
stituent parts.  She  is  self-sufficing  in  a million 
respects  in  which  we  are  not  so.  We  depend  on 
her  for  almost  everything,  she  on  us  for  but  a 
small  portion  of  her  history.  She  swings  us  in 
her  orbit  from  winter  to  summer  and  revolves 
us  from  day  into  night  and  from  night  into  day. 

Complexity  in  unity  is  another  sign  of 
superiority.  The  total  earth’s  complexity  far 
exceeds  that  of  any  organism,  for  she  includes 
all  our  organisms  in  herself,  along  with  an 
infinite  number  of  things  that  our  organisms 
fail  to  include.  Yet  how  simple  and  massive 
are  the  phases  of  her  own  proper  life ! As  the 
total  bearing  of  any  animal  is  sedate  and 
tranquil  compared  with  the  agitation  of  its 
blood  corpuscles,  so  is  the  earth  a sedate  and 
tranquil  being  compared  with  the  animals 
whom  she  supports. 

To  develop  from  within,  instead  of  being 
fashioned  from  without,  is  also  counted  as 


157 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

something  superior  in  men’s  eyes.  An  egg  is 
a higher  style  of  being  than  a piece  of  clay 
which  an  external  modeler  makes  into  the 
image  of  a bird.  Well,  the  earth’s  history 
develops  from  within.  It  is  like  that  of  a 
wonderful  egg  which  the  sun’s  heat,  like  that 
of  a mother-hen,  has  stimulated  to  its  cycles 
of  evolutionary  change. 

Individuality  of  type,  and  difference  from 
other  beings  of  its  type,  is  another  mark  of  rank. 
The  earth  differs  from  every  other  planet,  and 
as  a class  planetary  beings  are  extraordinarily 
distinct  from  other  beings. 

Long  ago  the  earth  was  called  an  animal ; 
but  a planet  is  a higher  class  of  being  than 
either  man  or  animal ; not  only  quantitatively 
greater,  like  a vaster  and  more  awkward  whale 
or  elephant,  but  a being  whose  enormous  size 
requires  an  altogether  different  plan  of  life. 
Our  animal  organization  comes  from  our  in- 
feriority. Our  need  of  moving  to  and  fro,  of 
stretching  our  limbs  and  bending  our  bodies, 
shows  only  our  defect.  What  are  our  legs  but 
crutches,  by  means  of  which,  with  restless 

158 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

efforts,  we  go  hunting  after  the  things  we  have 
not  inside  of  ourselves.  But  the  earth  is  no 
such  cripple ; why  should  she  who  already  pos- 
sesses within  herself  the  things  we  so  painfully 
pursue,  have  limbs  analogous  to  ours  ? Shall 
she  mimic  a small  part  of  herself  ? What  need 
has  she  of  arms,  with  nothing  to  reach  for  ? of 
a neck,  with  no  head  to  carry  ? of  eyes  or  nose 
when  she  finds  her  way  through  space  without 
either,  and  has  the  millions  of  eyes  of  all  her 
animals  to  guide  their  movements  on  her  sur- 
face, and  all  their  noses  to  smell  the  flowers 
that  grow  ? For,  as  we  are  ourselves  a part  of 
the  earth,  so  our  organs  are  her  organs.  She 
is,  as  it  were,  eye  and  ear  over  her  whole  extent 
— all  that  we  see  and  hear  in  separation  she 
sees  and  hears  at  once.  She  brings  forth  living 
beings  of.  countless  kinds  upon  her  surface, 
and  their  multitudinous  conscious  relations 
with  each  other  she  takes  up  into  her  higher 
and  more  general  conscious  life. 

Most  of  us,  considering  the  theory  that  the 
whole  terrestrial  mass  is  animated  as  our 
bodies  are,  make  the  mistake  of  working  the 

159 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


analogy  too  literally,  and  allowing  for  no  dif- 
ferences. If  the  earth  be  a sentient  organism, 
we  say,  where  are  her  brain  and  nerves  ? What 
corresponds  to  her  heart  and  lungs  ? In  other 
words,  we  expect  functions  which  she  already 
performs  through  us,  to  be  performed  outside 
of  us  again,  and  in  just  the  same  way.  But  we 
see  perfectly  well  how  the  earth  performs  some 
of  these  functions  in  a way  unlike  our  way.  If 
you  speak  of  circulation,  what  need  has  she  of 
a heart  when  the  sun  keeps  all  the  showers 
of  rain  that  fall  upon  her  and  all  the  springs 
and  brooks  and  rivers  that  irrigate  her,  going  ? 
What  need  has  she  of  internal  lungs,  when  her 
whole  sensitive  surface  is  in  living  commerce 
writh  the  atmosphere  that  clings  to  it  ? 

The  organ  that  gives  us  most  trouble  is  the 
brain.  All  the  consciousness  we  directly  know 
seems  tied  to  brains.  — Can  there  be  con- 
sciousness, we  ask,  where  there  is  no  brain  ? 
But  our  brain,  wThich  primarily  serves  to  corre- 
late our  muscular  reactions  with  the  external 
objects  on  which  we  depend,  performs  a func- 
tion which  the  earth  performs  in  an  entirely 

160 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

different  way.  She  has  no  proper  muscles  or 
limbs  of  her  own,  and  the  only  objects  external 
to  her  are  the  other  stars.  To  these  her  whole 
mass  reacts  by  most  exquisite  alterations  in  its 
total  gait,  and  by  still  more  exquisite  vibratory 
responses  in  its  substance.  Her  ocean  reflects 
the  lights  of  heaven  as  in  a mighty  mirror,  her 
atmosphere  refracts  them  like  a monstrous 
lens,  the  clouds  and  snow-fields  combine  them 
into  white,  the  woods  and  flowers  disperse  them 
into  colors.  Polarization,  interference,  absorp- 
tion, awaken  sensibilities  in  matter  of  which 
our  senses  are  too  coarse  to  take  any  note. 

For  these  cosmic  relations  of  hers,  then, 
she  no  more  needs  a special  brain  than  she 
needs  eyes  or  ears.  Our  brains  do  indeed  unify 
and  correlate  innumerable  functions.  Our 
eyes  know  nothing  of  sound,  our  ears  nothing 
of  light,  but,  having  brains,  we  can  feel  sound 
and  light  together,  and  compare  them.  We 
account  for  this  by  the  fibres  which  in  the 
brain  connect  the  optical  with  the  acoustic  cen- 
tre, but  just  how  these  fibres  bring  together  not 
only  the  sensations,  but  the  centres,  we  fail  to 

161 


A PLURALISTIC  universe 

see.  But  if  fibres  are  indeed  all  that  is  needed 
to  do  that  trick,  has  not  the  earth  pathways, 
by  which  you  and  I are  physically  continuous, 
more  than  enough  to  do  for  our  two  minds 
what  the  brain-fibres  do  for  the  sounds  and 
sights  in  a single  mind  ? Must  every  higher 
means  of  unification  between  things  be  a 
literal  brain- fibre,  and  go  by  that  name  ? 
Cannot  the  earth-mind  know  otherwise  the 
contents  of  our  minds  together  ? 

Fechner’s  imagination,  insisting  on  the  dif- 
ferences as  well  as  on  the  resemblances,  thus 
tries  to  make  our  picture  of  the  whole  earth’s 
life  more  concrete.  He  revels  in  the  thought  of 
its  perfections.  To  carry  her  precious  freight 
through  the  hours  and  seasons  what  form  could 
be  more  excellent  than  hers  — being  as  it  is 
horse,  wheels,  and  wagon  all  in  one.  Think 
of  her  beauty  — a shining  ball,  sky-blue  and 
sun-lit  over  one  half,  the  other  bathed  in  starry 
night,  reflecting  the  heavens  from  all  her  wa- 
ters, myriads  of  lights  and  shadows  in  the 
folds  of  her  mountains  and  windings  of  her  val- 
leys, she  would  be  a spectacle  of  rainbow  glory, 

162 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 


could  one  only  see  her  from  afar  as  we  see 
parts  of  her  from  her  own  mountain-tops. 
Every  quality  of  landscape  that  has  a name 
would  then  be  visible  in  her  at  once  — all  that 
is  delicate  or  graceful,  all  that  is  quiet,  or  wild, 
or  romantic,  or  desolate,  or  cheerful,  or  luxu- 
riant, or  fresh.  That  landscape  is  her  face  — 
a peopled  landscape,  too,  for  men’s  eyes  would 
appear  in  it  like  diamonds  among  the  dew- 
drops.  Green  would  be  the  dominant  color, 
but  the  blue  atmosphere  and  the  clouds  would 
enfold  her  as  a bride  is  shrouded  in  her  veil  — 
a veil  the  vapory  transparent  folds  of  which  the 
earth,  through  her  ministers  the  winds,  never 
tires  of  laying  and  folding  about  herself  anew. 

Every  element  has  its  own  living  denizens. 
Can  the  celestial  ocean  of  ether,  whose  waves 
are  light,  in  which  the  earth  herself  floats, 
not  have  hers,  higher  by  as  much  as  their  ele- 
ment is  higher,  swimming  without  fins,  flying 
without  wings,  moving,  immense  and  tranquil, 
as  by  a half-spiritual  force  through  the  half- 
spiritual sea  which  they  inhabit,  rejoicing  in 
the  exchange  of  luminous  influence  with  one 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

another,  following  the  slightest  pull  of  one 
another’s  attraction,  and  harboring,  each  of 
them,  an  inexhaustible  inward  wealth  ? 

Men  have  always  made  fables  about  angels, 
dwelling  in  the  light,  needing  no  earthly  food 
or  drink,  messengers  between  ourselves  and 
God.  Here  are  actually  existent  beings,  dwell- 
ing in  the  light  and  moving  through  the  sky, 
needing  neither  food  nor  drink,  intermediaries 
between  God  and  us,  obeying  his  commands. 
So,  if  the  heavens  really  are  the  home  of  angels, 
the  heavenly  bodies  must  be  those  very  angels, 
for  other  creatures  there  are  none.  Yes!  the 
earth  is  our  great  common  guardian  angel,  who 
watches  over  all  our  interests  combined. 

In  a striking  page  Fechner  relates  one  of  his 
moments  of  direct  vision  of  this  truth. 

‘On  a certain  spring  morning  I went  out 
to  walk.  The  fields  were  green,  the  birds  sang, 
the  dew  glistened,  the  smoke  was  rising,  here 
and  there  a man  appeared ; a light  as  of  trans- 
figuration lay  on  all  things.  It  was  only  a little 
bit  of  the  earth ; it  was  only  one  moment  of  her 
existence;  and  yet  as  my  look  embraced  her 

164 


IY.  CONCERNING  FECHNEJt 


more  and  more  it  seemed  to  me  not  only  so 
beautiful  an  idea,  but  so  true  and  clear  a fact, 
that  she  is  an  angel,  an  angel  so  rich  and 
fresh  and  flower-like,  and  yet  going  her  round 
in  the  skies  so  firmly  and  so  at  one  with  her- 
self, turning  her  whole  living  face  to  Heaven, 
and  carrying  me  along  with  her  into  that 
Heaven,  that  I asked  myself  how  the  opinions 
of  men  could  ever  have  so  spun  themselves 
away  from  life  so  far  as  to  deem  the  earth  only 
a dry  clod,  and  to  seek  for  angels  above  it  or 
about  it  in  the  emptiness  of  the  sky,  — only  to 
find  them  nowhere.  . . . But  such  an  experi- 
ence as  this  passes  for  fantastic.  The  earth  is 
a globular  body,  and  what  more  she  may  be, 
one  can  find  in  mineralogical  cabinets.’2 

Where  there  is  no  vision  the  people  perish. 
Few  professorial  philosophers  have  any  vision. 
Fechner  had  vision,  and  that  is  why  one  can 
read  him  over  and  over  again,  and  each  time 
bring  away  a fresh  sense  of  reality. 

His  earliest  book  was  a vision  of  what  the 
inner  life  of  plants  may  be  like.  He  called  it 
‘Nanna.’  In  the  development  of  animals  the 

165 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

nervous  system  is  the  central  fact.  Plants  de- 
velop centrifugally,  spread  their  organs  abroad. 
For  that  reason  people  suppose  that  they  can 
have  no  consciousness,  for  they  lack  the  unity 
which  the  central  nervous  system  provides.  But 
the  plant’s  consciousness  may  be  of  another 
type,  being  connected  with  other  structures. 
Violins  and  pianos  give  out  sounds  because  they 
have  strings.  Does  it  follow  that  nothing  but 
strings  can  give  out  sound  ? How  then  about 
flutes  and  organ-pipes  ? Of  course  their  sounds 
are  of  a different  quality,  and  so  may  the  con- 
sciousness of  plants  be  of  a quality  correlated 
exclusively  with  the  kind  of  organization  that 
they  possess.  Nutrition,  respiration,  propaga- 
tion take  place  in  them  without  nerves.  In  us 
these  functions  are  conscious  only  in  unusual 
states,  normally  their  consciousness  is  eclipsed 
by  that  which  goes  with  the  brain.  No  such 
eclipse  occurs  in  plants,  and  their  lower  con- 
sciousness may  therefore  be  all  the  more  lively. 
With  nothing  to  do  but  to  drink  the  light  and 
air  with  their  leaves,  to  let  their  cells  proliferate, 
to  feel  their  rootlets  draw  the  sap,  is  it  conceiv- 

166 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

able  that  they  should  not  consciously  suffer  if 
water,  light,  and  air  are  suddenly  withdrawn  ? 
or  that  when  the  flowering  and  fertilization 
which  are  the  culmination  of  their  life  take 
place,  they  should  not  feel  their  own  existence 
more  intensely  and  enjoy  something  like  what 
we  call  pleasure  in  ourselves  ? Does  the  water- 
lily,  rocking  in  her  triple  bath  of  water,  air,  and 
light,  relish  in  no  wise  her  own  beauty  ? When 
the  plant  in  our  room  turns  to  the  light,  closes 
her  blossoms  in  the  dark,  responds  to  our  wa- 
tering or  pruning  by  increase  of  size  or  change 
of  shape  and  bloom,  who  has  the  right  to  say 
she  does  not  feel,  or  that  she  plays  a purely  pas- 
sive part  ? Truly  plants  can  foresee  nothing, 
neither  the  scythe  of  the  mower,  nor  the  hand 
extended  to  pluck  their  flowers.  They  can 
neither  run  away  nor  cry  out.  But  this  only 
proves  how  different  their  modes  of  feeling 
life  must  be  from  those  of  animals  that  live 
by  eyes  and  ears  and  locomotive  organs,  it  does 
not  prove  that  they  have  no  mode  of  feeling 
life  at  all. 

How  scanty  and  scattered  would  sensation 
167 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


be  on  our  globe,  if  the  feeling-life  of  plants 
were  blotted  from  existence.  Solitary  would 
consciousness  move  through  the  woods  in  the 
shape  of  some  deer  or  other  quadruped,  or  fly 
about  the  flowers  in  that  of  some  insect,  but 
can  we  really  suppose  that  the  Nature  through 
which  God’s  breath  blows  is  such  a barren 
wilderness  as  this  ? 

I have  probably  by  this  time  said  enough  to 
acquaint  those  of  you  who  have  never  seen 
these  metaphysical  writings  of  Fechner  with 
their  more  general  characteristics,  and  I hope 
that  some  of  you  may  now  feel  like  reading 
them  yourselves.3  The  special  thought  of  Fech- 
ner’s  with  which  in  these  lectures  I have  most 
practical  concern,  is  his  belief  that  the  more 
inclusive  forms  of  consciousness  are  in  part 
constituted  by  the  more  limited  forms.  Not  that 
they  are  the  mere  sum  of  the  more  limited 
forms.  As  our  mind  is  not  the  bare  sum  of  our 
sights  plus  our  sounds  plus  our  pains,  but  in 
adding  these  terms  together  also  finds  rela- 
tions among  them  and  weaves  them  into 
schemes  and  forms  and  objects  of  which  no  one 

168 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

sense  in  its  separate  estate  knows  anything, 
so  the  earth-soul  traces  relations  between  the 
contents  of  my  mind  and  the  contents  of  yours 
of  which  neither  of  our  separate  minds  is  con- 
scious. It  has  schemes,  forms,  and  objects  pro- 
portionate to  its  wider  field,  which  our  mental 
fields  are  far  too  narrow  to  cognize.  By  our- 
selves we  are  simply  out  of  relation  with  each 
other,  for  it  we  are  both  of  us  there,  and  dif- 
ferent from  each  other,  which  is  a positive 
relation.  What  we  are  without  knowing,  it 
knows  that  we  are.  We  are  closed  against  its 
world,  but  that  world  is  not  closed  against  us. 
It  is  as  if  the  total  universe  of  inner  life  had 
a sort  of  grain  or  direction,  a sort  of  valvular 
structure,  permitting  knowledge  to  flow  in  one 
way  only,  so  that  the  wider  might  always  have 
the  narrower  under  observation,  but  never  the 
narrower  the  wider. 

Fechner’s  great  analogy  here  is  the  relation 
of  the  senses  to  our  individual  minds.  When 
our  eyes  are  open  their  sensations  enter  into 
our  general  mental  life,  which  grows  inces- 
santly by  the  addition  of  what  they  see.  Close 

169 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


the  eyes,  however,  and  the  visual  additions 
stop,  nothing  but  thoughts  and  memories  of 
the  past  visual  experiences  remain  — in  com- 
bination of  course  with  the  enormous  stock  of 
other  thoughts  and  memories,  and  with  the 
data  coming  in  from  the  senses  not  yet  closed. 
Our  eye-sensations  of  themselves  know  no- 
thing of  this  enormous  life  into  which  they  fall. 
Fechner  thinks,  as  any  common  man  would 
think,  that  they  are  taken  into  it  directly  when 
they  occur,  and  form  part  of  it  just  as  they  are. 
They  don’t  stay  outside  and  get  represented 
inside  by  their  copies.  It  is  only  the  memo- 
ries and  concepts  of  them  that  are  copies; 
the  sensible  perceptions  themselves  are  taken 
in  or  walled  out  in  their  own  proper  persons 
according  as  the  eyes  are  open  or  shut. 

Fechner  likens  our  individual  persons  on 
the  earth  unto  so  many  sense-organs  of  the 
earth’s  soul.  We  add  to  its  perceptive  life  so 
long  as  our  own  life  lasts.  It  absorbs  our  per- 
ceptions, just  as  they  occur,  into  its  larger 
sphere  of  knowledge,  and  combines  them  with 
the  other  data  there.  When  one  of  us  dies,  it 


170 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

is  as  if  an  eye  of  the  world  were  closed,  for  all 
perceptive  contributions  from  that  particular 
quarter  cease.  But  the  memories  and  concept- 
ual relations  that  have  spun  themselves  round 
the  perceptions  of  that  person  remain  in  the 
larger  earth-life  as  distinct  as  ever,  and  form 
new  relations  and  grow  and  develop  through- 
out all  the  future,  in  the  same  way  in  which 
our  own  distinct  objects  of  thought,  once  stored 
in  memory,  form  new  relations  and  develop 
throughout  our  whole  finite  life.  This  is 
Fechner’s  theory  of  immortality,  first  published 
in  the  little  ‘Biichlein  des  lebens  nach  dem 
tode,’  in  1836,  and  re-edited  in  greatly  im- 
proved shape  in  the  last  volume  of  his  ‘Zend- 
avesta.’ 

We  rise  upon  the  earth  as  wavelets  rise  upon 
the  ocean.  We  grow  out  of  her  soil  as  leaves 
grow  from  a tree.  The  wavelets  catch  the  sun- 
beams separately,  the  leaves  stir  when  the 
branches  do  not  move.  They  realize  their  own 
events  apart,  just  as  in  our  own  consciousness, 
when  anything  becomes  emphatic,  the  back- 
ground fades  from  observation.  Yet  the  event 

171 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


works  back  upon  the  background,  as  the  wave- 
let works  upon  the  waves,  or  as  the  leaf’s 
movements  work  upon  the  sap  inside  the 
branch.  The  whole  sea  and  the  whole  tree 
are  registers  of  what  has  happened,  and  are 
different  for  the  wave’s  and  the  leaf’s  action 
having  occurred.  A grafted  twig  may  modify 
its  stock  to  the  roots : — so  our  outlived  private 
experiences,  impressed  on  the  whole  earth- 
mind  as  memories,  lead  the  immortal  life  of 
ideas  there,  and  become  parts  of  the  great 
system,  fully  distinguished  from  one  another, 
just  as  we  ourselves  when  alive  were  distinct, 
realizing  themselves  no  longer  isolatedly,  but 
along  with  one  another  as  so  many  partial 
systems,  entering  thus  into  new  combinations, 
being  affected  by  the  perceptive  experiences 
of  those  living  then,  and  affecting  the  living 
in  their  turn  — altho  they  are  so  seldom  recog- 
nized by  living  men  to  do  so. 

If  you  imagine  that  this  entrance  after  the 
death  of  the  body  into  a common  life  of  higher 
type  means  a merging  and  loss  of  our  distinct 
personality,  Fechner  asks  you  whether  a visual 

172 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

sensation  of  our  own  exists  in  any  sense  less 
for  itself  or  less  distinctly,  when  it  enters  into 
our  higher  relational  consciousness  and  is  there 
distinguished  and  defined. 

— But  here  I must  stop  my  reporting  and 
send  you  to  his  volumes.  Thus  is  the  universe 
alive,  according  to  this  philosopher!  I think 
you  will  admit  that  he  makes  it  more  thickly 
alive  than  do  the  other  philosophers  who,  fol- 
lowing rationalistic  methods  solely,  gain  the 
same  results,  but  only  in  the  thinnest  outlines. 
Both  Fechner  and  Professor  Royce,  for  ex- 
ample, believe  ultimately  in  one  all-inclusive 
mind.  Both  believe  that  we,  just  as  we  stand 
here,  are  constituent  parts  of  that  mind.  No 
other  content  has  it  than  us,  with  all  the  other 
creatures  like  or  unlike  us,  and  the  relations 
which  it  finds  between  us.  Our  eaches,  col- 
lected into  one,  are  substantively  identical  with 
its  all,  tho  the  all  is  perfect  while  no  each  is 
perfect,  so  that  we  have  to  admit  that  new 
qualities  as  well  as  unperceived  relations  ac- 
crue from  the  collective  form.  It  is  thus  su- 
perior to  the  distributive  form.  But  having 

173 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


reached  this  result,  Royce  (tho  his  treatment 
of  the  subject  on  its  moral  side  seems  to  me 
infinitely  richer  and  thicker  than  that  of  any 
other  contemporary  idealistic  philosopher) 
leaves  us  very  much  to  our  own  devices. 
Fechner,  on  the  contrary,  tries  to  trace  the 
superiorities  due  to  the  more  collective  form 
in  as  much  detail  as  he  can.  He  marks  the 
various  intermediary  stages  and  halting  places 
of  collectivity,  — as  we  are  to  our  separate 
senses,  so  is  the  earth  to  us,  so  is  the  solar 
system  to  the  earth,  etc.,  — and  if,  in  order  to 
escape  an  infinitely  long  summation,  he  posits 
a complete  God  as  the  all-container  and  leaves 
him  about  as  indefinite  in  feature  as  the  ideal- 
ists leave  their  absolute,  he  yet  provides  us  with 
a very  definite  gate  of  approach  to  him  in  the 
shape  of  the  earth-soul,  through  which  in  the 
nature  of  things  we  must  first  make  connexion 
with  all  the  more  enveloping  superhuman 
realms,  and  with  which  our  more  immediate 
religious  commerce  at  any  rate  has  to  be  car- 
ried on. 

Ordinary  monistic  idealism  leaves  every- 
174 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 

thing  intermediary  out.  It  recognizes  only  the 
extremes,  as  if,  after  the  first  rude  face  of  the 
phenomenal  world  in  all  its  particularity,  no- 
thing but  the  supreme  in  all  its  perfection  could 
be  found.  First,  you  and  I,  just  as  we  are  in  this 
room ; and  the  moment  we  get  below  that  sur- 
face, the  unutterable  absolute  itself ! Does  n’t 
this  show  a singularly  indigent  imagination  ? 
Is  n’t  this  brave  universe  made  on  a richer 
pattern,  with  room  in  it  for  a long  hierarchy  of 
beings  ? Materialistic  science  makes  it  infi- 
nitely richer  in  terms,  with  its  molecules,  and 
ether,  and  electrons,  and  what  not.  Absolute 
idealism,  thinking  of  reality  only  under  intel- 
lectual forms,  knows  not  what  to  do  with 
bodies  of  any  grade,  and  can  make  no  use  of 
any  psychophysical  analogy  or  correspond- 
ence. The  resultant  thinness  is  startling  when 
compared  with  the  thickness  and  articulation 
of  such  a universe  as  Fechner  paints.  May  not 
satisfaction  with  the  rationalistic  absolute  as 
the  alpha  and  omega,  and  treatment  of  it  in 
all  its  abstraction  as  an  adequate  religious  ob- 
ject, argue  a certain  native  poverty  of  mental 

175 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


demand?  Things  reveal  themselves  soonest 
to  those  who  most  passionately  want  them, 
for  our  need  sharpens  our  wit.  To  a mind 
content  with  little,  the  much  in  the  universe 
may  always  remain  hid. 

To  be  candid,  one  of  my  reasons  for  say- 
ing so  much  about  Fechner  has  been  to  make 
the  thinness  of  our  current  transcendentalism 
appear  more  evident  by  an  effect  of  contrast. 
Scholasticism  ran  thick;  Hegel  himself  ran 
thick ; but  english  and  american  transcenden- 
talisms run  thin.  If  philosophy  is  more  a mat- 
ter of  passionate  vision  than  of  logic,  — and  I 
believe  it  is,  logic  only  finding  reasons  for  the 
vision  afterwards,  — must  not  such  thinness 
come  either  from  the  vision  being  defective 
in  the  disciples,  or  from  their  passion,  matched 
with  Fechner ’s  or  with  Hegel’s  own  passion, 
being  as  moonlight  unto  sunlight  or  as  water 
unto  wine  ? 4 

But  I have  also  a much  deeper  reason  for 
making  Fechner  a part  of  my  text.  His  assump- 
tion that  conscious  experiences  freely  compound 
and  separate  themselves,  the  same  assumption 

176 


IV.  CONCERNING  FECHNER 


by  which  absolutism  explains  the  relation  of 
our  minds  to  the  eternal  mind,  and  the  same 
by  which  empiricism  explains  the  composition 
of  the  human  mind  out  of  subordinate  men- 
tal elements,  is  not  one  which  we  ought  to  let 
pass  without  scrutiny.  I shall  scrutinize  it  in 
the  next  lecture. 


V 


THE  COMPOUNDING  OF 
CONSCIOUSNESS 


LECTURE  V 


THE  COMPOUNDING  OF 
CONSCIOUSNESS 

In  my  last  lecture  I gave  a miserably  scanty 
outline  of  the  way  of  thinking  of  a philosopher 
remarkable  for  the  almost  unexampled  rich- 
ness of  his  imagination  of  details.  I owe  to 
Fechner’s  shade  an  apology  for  presenting  him 
in  a manner  so  unfair  to  the  most  essential 
quality  of  his  genius;  but  the  time  allotted  is 
too  short  to  say  more  about  the  particulars 
of  his  work,  so  I proceed  to  the  programme 
I suggested  at  the  end  of  our  last  hour.  I 
wish  to  discuss  the  assumption  that  states 
of  consciousness,  so-called,  can  separate  and 
combine  themselves  freely,  and  keep  their 
own  identity  unchanged  while  forming  parts 
of  simultaneous  fields  of  experience  of  wider 
scope. 

Let  me  first  explain  just  what  I mean  by 
this.  While  you  listen  to  my  voice,  for  example, 
you  are  perhaps  inattentive  to  some  bodily  sen- 
sation due  to  your  clothing  or  your  posture. 

181 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

Yet  that  sensation  would  seem  probably  to  be 
there,  for  in  an  instant,  by  a change  of  atten- 
tion, you  can  have  it  in  one  field  of  conscious- 
ness with  the  voice.  It  seems  as  if  it  existed 
first  in  a separate  form,  and  then  as  if,  with- 
out itself  changing,  it  combined  with  your 
other  co-existent  sensations.  It  is  after  this 
analogy  that  pantheistic  idealism  thinks  that 
we  exist  in  the  absolute.  The  absolute,  it 
thinks,  makes  the  world  by  knowing  the  whole 
of  it  at  once  in  one  undivided  eternal  act.1  To 
‘ be,’  really  to  be,  is  to  be  as  it  knows  us  to  be, 
along  with  everything  else,  namely,  and  clothed 
with  the  fulness  of  our  meaning.  Meanwhile 
we  are  at  the  same  time  not  only  really  and 
as  it  knows  us,  but  also  apparently,  for  to  our 
separate  single  selves  we  appear  without  most 
other  things  and  unable  to  declare  with  any 
fulness  what  our  own  meaning  is.  Now  the 
classic  doctrine  of  pantheistic  idealism,  from 
the  Upanishads  down  to  Josiah  Royce,  is  that 
the  finite  knowers,  in  spite  of  their  apparent 
ignorance,  are  one  with  the  knower  of  the  all. 
In  the  most  limited  moments  of  our  private  ex- 

182 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

perience,  the  absolute  idea,  as  Dr.  McTaggart 
told  us,  is  implicitly  contained.  The  moments, 
as  Royce  says,  exist  only  in  relation  to  it. 
They  are  true  or  erroneous  only  through  its 
overshadowing  presence.  Of  the  larger  self 
that  alone  eternally  is,  they  are  the  organic 
parts.  They  are,  only  inasmuch  as  they  are 
implicated  in  its  being. 

There  is  thus  in  reality  but  this  one  self,  con- 
sciously inclusive  of  all  the  lesser  selves,  logos, 
problem-solver,  and  all-knower ; and  Royce  in- 
geniously compares  the  ignorance  that  in  our 
persons  breaks  out  in  the  midst  of  its  complete 
knowledge  and  isolates  me  from  you  and  both 
of  us  from  it,  to  the  inattention  into  which  our 
finite  minds  are  liable  to  fall  with  respect  to 
such  implicitly  present  details  as  those  corpo- 
real sensations  to  which  I made  allusion  just 
now.  Those  sensations  stand  to  our  total  pri- 
vate minds  in  the  same  relation  in  which  our 
private  minds  stand  to  the  absolute  mind.  Pri- 
vacy means  ignorance  — I still  quote  Royce — 
and  ignorance  means  inattention.  We  are  finite 
because  our  wills,  as  such,  are  only  fragments 

183 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

of  the  absolute  will ; because  will  means  inter- 
est, and  an  incomplete  will  means  an  incom- 
plete interest;  and  because  incompleteness  of 
interest  means  inattention  to  much  that  a fuller 
interest  would  bring  us  to  perceive.2 

In  this  account  Royce  makes  by  far  the 
manliest  of  the  post-hegelian  attempts  to  read 
some  empirically  apprehensible  content  into 
the  notion  of  our  relation  to  the  absolute  mind. 

I have  to  admit,  now  that  I propose  to  you 
to  scrutinize  this  assumption  rather  closely, 
that  trepidation  seizes  me.  The  subject  is  a 
subtle  and  abstruse  one.  It  is  one  thing  to 
delve  into  subtleties  by  one’s  self  with  pen  in 
hand,  or  to  study  out  abstruse  points  in  books, 
but  quite  another  thing  to  make  a popular  lec- 
ture out  of  them.  Nevertheless  I must  not 
flinch  from  my  task  here,  for  I think  that  this 
particular  point  forms  perhaps  the  vital  knot 
of  the  present  philosophic  situation,  and  I 
imagine  that  the  times  are  ripe,  or  almost  ripe, 
for  a serious  attempt  to  be  made  at  its  untying. 

It  may  perhaps  help  to  lessen  the  arduous- 
ness of  the  subject  if  I put  the  first  part  of  what 

184 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

I have  to  say  in  the  form  of  a direct  personal 
confession. 

In  the  year  1890  I published  a work  on 
psychology  in  which  it  became  my  duty  to 
discuss  the  value  of  a certain  explanation  of 
our  higher  mental  states  that  had  come  into 
favor  among  the  more  biologically  inclined 
psychologists.  Suggested  partly  by  the  asso- 
ciation of  ideas,  and  partly  by  the  analogy  of 
chemical  compounds,  this  opinion  was  that 
complex  mental  states  are  resultants  of  the 
self-compounding  of  simpler  ones.  The  Mills 
had  spoken  of  mental  chemistry;  Wundt  of 
a ‘psychic  synthesis,’  which  might  develop 
properties  not  contained  in  the  elements ; and 
such  writers  as  Spencer,  Taine,  Fiske,  Bar- 
ratt,  and  Clifford  had  propounded  a great 
evolutionary  theory  in  which,  in  the  absence  of 
souls,  selves,  or  other  principles  of  unity,  pri- 
mordial units  of  mind-stuff  or  mind-dust  were 
represented  as  summing  themselves  together  in 
successive  stages  of  compounding  and  re-com- 
pounding, and  thus  engendering  our  higher 
and  more  complex  states  of  mind.  The  ele- 

185 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


mentary  feeling  of  A,  let  us  say,  and  the  ele- 
mentary feeling  of  B,  when  they  occur  in  certain 
conditions,  combine,  according  to  this  doctrine, 
into  a feeling  of  A-plus-B,  and  this  in  turn  com- 
bines with  a similarly  generated  feeling  of 
C-plus-D,  until  at  last  the  whole  alphabet  may 
appear  together  in  one  field  of  awareness,  with- 
out any  other  witnessing  principle  or  princi- 
ples beyond  the  feelings  of  the  several  letters 
themselves,  being  supposed  to  exist.  What 
each  of  them  witnesses  separately, 4 all  ’ of  them 
are  supposed  to  witness  in  conjunction.  But 
their  distributive  knowledge  does  n’t  give  rise 
to  their  collective  knowledge  by  any  act,  it  is 
their  collective  knowledge.  The  lower  forms  of 
consciousness  ‘ taken  together  ’ are  the  higher. 
It,  ‘taken  apart,’  consists  of  nothing  and  is 
nothing  but  them.  This,  at  least,  is  the  most 
obvious  way  of  understanding  the  doctrine, 
and  is  the  way  I understood  it  in  the  chapter 
in  my  psychology. 

Superficially  looked  at,  this  seems  just  like 
the  combination  of  H2  and  O into  water,  but 
looked  at  more  closely,  the  analogy  halts  badly. 

186 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


When  a chemist  tells  us  that  two  atoms  of  hy- 
drogen and  one  of  oxygen  combine  themselves 
of  their  own  accord  into  the  new  compound 
substance  ‘water,’  he  knows  (if  he  believes  in 
the  mechanical  viewr  of  nature)  that  this  is  only 
an  elliptical  statement  for  a more  complex  fact. 
That  fact  is  that  when  H2  and  O,  instead  of 
keeping  far  apart,  get  into  closer  quarters,  say 
into  the  position  H-O-H,  they  affect  surround- 
ing bodies  differently : they  nowr  wet  our  skin, 
dissolve  sugar,  put  out  fire,  etc.,  wdiich  they 
didn’t  in  their  former  positions.  ‘Water’  is 
but  our  name  for  what  acts  thus  peculiarly. 
But  if  the  skin,  sugar,  and  fire  were  absent, 
no  witness  would  speak  of  water  at  all.  He 
would  still  talk  of  the  H and  O distributively, 
merely  noting  that  they  acted  now  in  the  new 
position  H-O-H. 

In  the  older  psychologies  the  soul  or  self  took 
the  place  of  the  sugar,  fire,  or  skin.  The  lower 
feelings  produced  effects  on  it,  and  their  ap- 
parent compounds  were  only  its  reactions.  As 
you  tickle  a man’s  face  with  a feather,  and  he 
laughs,  so  when  you  tickle  his  intellectual  prin- 

187 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

ciple  with  a retinal  feeling,  say,  and  a muscu- 
lar feeling  at  once,  it  laughs  responsively  by  its 
category  of  ‘ space,’  but  it  would  be  false  to  treat 
the  space  as  simply  made  of  those  simpler  feel- 
ings. It  is  rather  a new  and  unique  psychic 
creation  which  their  combined  action  on  the 
mind  is  able  to  evoke. 

I found  myself  obliged,  in  discussing  the 
mind-dust  theory,  to  urge  this  last  alternative 
view.  The  so-called  mental  compounds  are 
simple  psychic  reactions  of  a higher  type. 
The  form  itself  of  them,  I said,  is  something 
new.  We  can’t  say  that  awareness  of  the  al- 
phabet as  such  is  nothing  more  than  twenty- 
six  awarenesses,  each  of  a separate  letter ; for 
those  are  twenty-six  distinct  awarenesses,  of 
single  letters  without  others,  while  their  so- 
called  sum  is  one  awareness,  of  every  letter  with 
its  comrades.  There  is  thus  something  new  in 
the  collective  consciousness.  It  knows  the  same 
letters,  indeed,  but  it  knows  them  in  this 
novel  way.  It  is  safer,  I said  (for  I fought  shy 
of  admitting  a self  or  soul  or  other  agent  of 
combination) , to  treat  the  consciousness  of  the 

188 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


alphabet  as  a twenty-seventh  fact,  the  substi- 
tute and  not  the  sum  of  the  twenty-six  simpler 
consciousnesses,  and  to  say  that  while  under 
certain  physiological  conditions  they  alone  are 
produced,  other  more  complex  physiological 
conditions  result  in  its  production  instead.  Do 
not  talk,  therefore,  I said,  of  the  higher  states 
consisting  of  the  simpler,  or  being  the  same 
with  them;  talk  rather  of  their  knowing  the 
same  things.  They  are  different  mental  facts, 
but  they  apprehend,  each  in  its  own  peculiar 
way,  the  same  objective  A,  B,  C,  and  D. 

The  theory  of  combination,  I was  forced  to 
conclude,  is  thus  untenable,  being  both  logi- 
cally nonsensical  and  practically  unnecessary. 
Say  what  you  will,  twelve  thoughts,  each  of  a 
single  word,  are  not  the  self-same  mental  thing 
as  one  thought  of  the  whole  sentence.  The 
higher  thoughts,  I insisted,  are  psychic  units, 
not  compounds;  but  for  all  that,  they  may 
know  together  as  a collective  multitude  the 
very  same  objects  wdiich  under  other  condi- 
tions are  known  separately  by  as  many  simple 
thoughts. 


189 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

For  many  years  I held  rigorously  to  this 
view,3  and  the  reasons  for  doing  so  seemed  to 
me  during  all  those  years  to  apply  also  to  the 
opinion  that  the  absolute  mind  stands  to  our 
minds  in  the  relation  of  a whole  to  its  parts. 
If  untenable  in  finite  psychology,  that  opinion 
ought  to  be  untenable  in  metaphysics  also. 
The  great  transcendentalist  metaphor  has  al- 
ways been,  as  I lately  reminded  you,  a gram- 
matical sentence.  Physically  such  a sentence  is 
of  course  composed  of  clauses,  these  of  words, 
the  words  of  syllables,  and  the  syllables  of 
letters.  We  may  take  each  word  in,  yet  not 
understand  the  sentence;  but  if  suddenly  the 
meaning  of  the  whole  sentence  flashes,  the 
sense  of  each  word  is  taken  up  into  that  whole 
meaning.  Just  so,  according  to  our  tran- 
scendentalist teachers,  the  absolute  mind  thinks 
the  whole  sentence,  while  we,  according  to  our 
rank  as  thinkers,  think  a clause,  a word,  a 
syllable,  or  a letter.  Most  of  us  are,  as  I said, 
mere  syllables  in  the  mouth  of  Allah.  And 
as  Allah  comes  first  in  the  order  of  being,  so 
comes  first  the  entire  sentence,  the  logos  that 

190 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


forms  the  eternal  absolute  thought.  Students 
of  language  tell  us  that  speech  began  with 
men’s  efforts  to  make  statements.  The  rude 
synthetic  vocal  utterances  first  used  for  this 
effect  slowly  got  stereotyped,  and  then  much 
later  got  decomposed  into  grammatical  parts. 
It  is  not  as  if  men  had  first  invented  letters 
and  made  syllables  of  them,  then  made  words 
of  the  syllables  and  sentences  of  the  words ; — 
they  actually  followed  the  reverse  order.  So, 
the  transcendentalists  affirm,  the  complete 
absolute  thought  is  the  pre-condition  of  our 
thoughts,  and  we  finite  creatures  are  only  in 
so  far  as  it  owns  us  as  its  verbal  fragments. 

The  metaphor  is  so  beautiful,  and  applies, 
moreover,  so  literally  to  such  a multitude  of 
the  minor  wholes  of  experience,  that  by  merely 
hearing  it  most  of  us  are  convinced  that  it  must 
apply  universally.  We  see  that  no  smallest 
raindrop  can  come  into  being  without  a whole 
shower,  no  single  feather  without  a whole  bird, 
neck  and  crop,  beak  and  tail,  coming  into  being 
simultaneously : so  we  unhesitatingly  lay  down 
the  law  that  no  part  of  anything  can  be  except 

191 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

so  far  as  the  whole  also  is.  And  then,  since 
everything  whatever  is  part  of  the  whole  uni- 
verse, and  since  (if  we  are  idealists)  nothing, 
w hether  part  or  whole,  exists  except  for  a wit- 
ness, we  proceed  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
unmitigated  absolute  as  witness  of  the  whole 
is  the  one  sole  ground  of  being  of  every  partial 
fact,  the  fact  of  our  own  existence  included. 
We  think  of  ourselves  as  being  only  a few  of 
the  feathers,  so  to  speak,  which  help  to  con- 
stitute that  absolute  bird.  Extending  the 
analogy  of  certain  wholes,  of  which  we  have 
familiar  experience,  to  the  whole  of  wholes, 
we  easily  become  absolute  idealists. 

But  if,  instead  of  yielding  to  the  seductions  of 
our  metaphor,  be  it  sentence,  shower,  or  bird, 
we  analyze  more  carefully  the  notion  suggested 
by  it  that  wre  are  constituent  parts  of  the  ab- 
solute’s eternal  field  of  consciousness,  w~e  find 
grave  difficulties  arising.  First,  the  difficulty  I 
found  with  the  mind-dust  theory.  If  the  abso- 
lute makes  us  by  knowing  us,  how  can  we  exist 
otherwise  than  as  it  knows  us  ? But  it  knowTs 
each  of  us  indivisibly  from  everything  else.  Yet 

192 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


if  to  exist  means  nothing  but  to  be  experienced, 
as  idealism  affirms,  we  surely  exist  otherwise, 
for  we  experience  ourselves  ignorantly  and  in 
division.  We  indeed  differ  from  the  abso- 
lute not  only  by  defect,  but  by  excess.  Our 
ignorances,  for  example,  bring  curiosities  and 
doubts  by  which  it  cannot  be  troubled,  for  it 
owns  eternally  the  solution  of  every  problem. 
Our  impotence  entails  pains,  our  imperfection 
sins,  which  its  perfection  keeps  at  a distance. 
What  I said  of  the  alphabet-form  and  the  letters 
holds  good  of  the  absolute  experience  and  our 
experiences.  Their  relation,  whatever  it  may 
be,  seems  not  to  be  that  of  identity. 

It  is  impossible  to  reconcile  the  peculiarities 
of  our  experience  with  our  being  only  the  abso- 
lute’s mental  objects.  A God,  as  distinguished 
from  the  absolute,  creates  things  by  projecting 
them  beyond  himself  as  so  many  substances, 
each  endowed  with  perseity,  as  the  scholastics 
call  it.  But  objects  of  thought  are  not  things 
per  se.  They  are  there  only  for  their  thinker, 
and  only  as  he  thinks  them.  How,  then,  can 
they  become  severally  alive  on  their  own  ac- 

193 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


counts  and  think  themselves  quite  otherwise 
than  as  he  thinks  them  ? It  is  as  if  the  char- 
acters in  a novel  were  to  get  up  from  the  pages, 
and  walk  away  and  transact  business  of  their 
own  outside  of  the  author’s  story. 

A third  difficulty  is  this : The  bird-metaphor 
is  physical,  but  we  see  on  reflection  that  in  the 
\ physical  world  there  is  no  real  compounding. 
‘ Wholes  ’ are  not  realities  there,  parts  only  are 
realities.  ‘ Bird  ’ is  only  our  name  for  the  physi- 
cal fact  of  a certain  grouping  of  organs,  just 
as  ‘Charles’s  Wain’  is  our  name  for  a certain 
grouping  of  stars.  The  ‘whole,’  be  it  bird  or 
constellation,  is  nothing  but  our  vision,  nothing 
but  an  effect  on  our  sensorium  when  a lot  of 
things  act  on  it  together.  It  is  not  realized  by 
any  organ  or  any  star,  or  experienced  apart 
from  the  consciousness  of  an  onlooker.4  In 
the  physical  world  taken  by  itself  there  is  thus 
no  ‘all,’  there  are  only  the  ‘eaches’  — at  least 
that  is  the  ‘ scientific  ’ view. 

In  the  mental  world,  on  the  contrary,  wholes 
do  in  point  of  fact  realize  themselves  perse.  The 
meaning  of  the  whole  sentence  is  just  as  much  a 

194 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


real  experience  as  the  feeling  of  each  word  is  ; 
the  absolute’s  experience  is  for  itself,  as  much 
as  yours  is  for  yourself  or  mine  for  myself.  So 
the  feather-and-bird  analogy  won’t  work  un- 
less you  make  the  absolute  into  a distinct  sort 
of  mental  agent  with  a vision  produced  in  it  by 
our  several  minds  analogous  to  the  ‘ bird  ’-vision 
which  the  feathers,  beak,  etc.,  produce  in  those 
same  minds.  The  ‘whole,’  which  is  its  experi- 
ence, would  then  be  its  unifying  reaction  on  our 
experiences,  and  not  those  very  experiences  self- 
combined.  Such  a view  as  this  would  go  with 
theism,  for  the  theistic  God  is  a separate  being ; 
but  it  would  not  go  with  pantheistic  idealism, 
the  very  essence  of  which  is  to  insist  that  we  are 
literally  parts  of  God,  and  he  only  ourselves  in 
our  totality — the  word  ‘ourselves’  here  stand- 
ing of  course  for  all  the  universe’s  finite  facts. 

I am  dragging  you  into  depths  unsuitable,  I 
fear,  for  a rapid  lecture.  Such  difficulties  as 
these  have  to  be  teased  out  with  a needle,  so  to 
speak,  and  lecturers  should  take  only  bird’s- 
eye  views.  The  practical  upshot  of  the  matter, 
however,  so  far  as  I am  concerned,  is  this,  that 


195 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

if  I had  been  lecturing  on  the  absolute  a very 
few  years  ago,  I should  unhesitatingly  have 
urged  these  difficulties,  and  developed  them  at 
still  greater  length,  to  show  that  the  hypothesis 
of  the  absolute  was  not  only  non-coercive  from 
the  logical  point  of  view,  but  self-contradictory 
as  well,  its  notion  that  parts  and  whole  are  only 
two  names  for  the  same  thing  not  bearing  crit- 
ical scrutiny.  If  you  stick  to  purely  physical 
terms  like  stars,  there  is-  no  whole.  If  you  call 
the  whole  mental,  then  the  so-called  whole,  in- 
stead of  being  one  fact  with  the  parts,  appears 
rather  as  the  integral  reaction  on  those  parts 
of  an  independent  higher  witness,  such  as  the 
theistic  God  is  supposed  to  be. 

So  long  as  this  was  the  state  of  my  own  mind, 
I could  accept  the  notion  of  self-compounding 
in  the  supernal  spheres  of  experience  no  more 
easily  than  in  that  chapter  on  mind-dust  I 
had  accepted  it  in  the  lower  spheres.  I found 
myself  compelled,  therefore,  to  call  the  abso- 
lute impossible  ; and  the  untrammelled  freedom 
with  which  pantheistic  or  monistic  idealists 
stepped  over  the  logical  barriers  which  Lotze 

196 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


and  others  had  set  down  long  before  I had  — I 
had  done  little  more  than  quote  these  previ- 
ous critics  in  my  chapter — surprised  me  not 
a little,  and  made  me,  I have  to  confess,  both 
resentful  and  envious.  Envious  because  in  the 
bottom  of  my  heart  I -wanted  the  same  freedom 
myself,  for  motives  which  I shall  develop  later; 
and  resentful  because  my  absolutist  friends 
seemed  to  me  to  be  stealing  the  privilege  of 
blowing  both  hot  and  cold.  To  establish  their 
absolute  they  used  an  intellectualist  type  of 
logic  which  they  disregarded  when  employed 
against  it.  It  seemed  to  me  that  they  ought  at 
least  to  have  mentioned  the  objections  that 
had  stopped  me  so  completely.  I had  yielded 
to  them  against  my  ‘will  to  believe,’  out  of 
pure  logical  scrupulosity.  They,  professing  to 
loathe  the  will  to  believe  and  to  follow  purest 
rationality,  had  simply  ignored  them.  The 
method  was  easy,  but  hardly  to  be  called  can- 
did. Fechner  indeed  was  candid  enough,  for 
he  had  never  thought  of  the  objections,  but 
later  writers,  like  Royce,  who  should  presum- 
ably have  heard  them,  had  passed  them  by  in 

197 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


silence.  I felt  as  if  these  philosophers  were 
granting  their  will  to  believe  in  monism  too 
easy  a license.  My  own  conscience  would  per- 
mit me  no  such  license. 

So  much  for  the  personal  confession  by 
which  you  have  allowed  me  to  introduce  the 
subject.  Let  us  now  consider  it  more  objec- 
tively. 

The  fundamental  difficulty  I have  found  is 
the  number  of  contradictions  which  idealistic 
monists  seem  to  disregard.  In  the  first  place 
they  attribute  to  all  existence  a mental  or 
experiential  character,  but  I find  their  simul- 
taneous belief  that  the  higher  and  the  lower  in 
the  universe  are  entitatively  identical,  incom- 
patible with  this  character.  Incompatible  in 
consequence  of  the  generally  accepted  doctrine 
that,  whether  Berkeley  were  right  or  not  in 
saying  of  material  existence  that  its  esse  is 
sentiri,  it  is  undoubtedly  right  to  say  of  mental 
existence  that  its  esse  is  sentiri  or  experiri.  If  I 
feel  pain,  it  is  just  pain  that  I feel,  however 
I may  have  come  by  the  feeling.  No  one  pre- 
tends that  pain  as  such  only  appears  like  pain, 

198 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

but  in  itself  is  different,  for  to  be  as  a mental 
experience  is  only  to  appear  to  some  one. 

The  idealists  in  question  ought  then  to  do 
one  of  two  things,  but  they  do  neither.  They 
ought  either  to  refute  the  notion  that  as  mental 
states  appear,  so  they  are ; or,  still  keeping  that 
notion,  they  ought  to  admit  a distinct  agent  of 
unification  to  do  the  work  of  the  all-knower, 
just  as  our  respective  souls  or  selves  in  popular 
philosophy  do  the  work  of  partial  knowers. 
Otherwise  it  is  like  a joint-stock  company  all 
shareholders  and  no  treasurer  or  director.  If 
our  finite  minds  formed  a billion  facts,  then  its 
mind,  knowing  our  billion,  would  make  a uni- 
verse composed  of  a billion  and  one  facts.  But 
transcendental  idealism  is  quite  as  unfriendly 
to  active  principles  called  souls  as  physiologi- 
cal psychology  is,  Kant  having,  as  it  thinks, 
definitively  demolished  them.  And  altho  some 
disciples  speak  of  the  transcendental  ego  of 
apperception  (which  they  celebrate  as  Kant’s 
most  precious  legacy  to  posterity)  as  if  it  were 
a combining  agent,  the  drift  of  monistic  au- 
thority is  certainly  in  the  direction  of  treating 

199 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


it  as  only  an  all- witness,  whose  field  of  vision 
wTe  finite  witnesses  do  not  cause,  but  constitute 
rather.  We  are  the  letters,  it  is  the  alphabet; 
we  are  the  features,  it  is  the  face ; not  indeed 
as  if  either  alphabet  or  face  were  something 
additional  to  the  letters  or  the  features,  but 
rather  as  if  it  were  only  another  name  for  the 
very  letters  or  features  themselves.  The  all- 
form assuredly  differs  from  the  each-form,  but 
the  matter  is  the  same  in  both,  and  the  each- 
form  only  an  unaccountable  appearance. 

But  this,  as  you  see,  contradicts  the  other 
idealist  principle,  of  a mental  fact  being  just 
what  it  appears  to  be.  If  their  forms  of  appear- 
ance are  so  different,  the  all  and  the  eaches 
cannot  be  identical. 

The  way  out  (unless,  indeed,  we  are  willing 
to  discard  the  logic  of  identity  altogether) 
would  seem  to  be  frankly  to  write  down  the  all 
and  the  eaches  as  two  distinct  orders  of  wit- 
ness, each  minor  witness  being  aware  of  its  own 
‘content’  solely,  while  the  greater  witness 
knowrs  the  minor  witnesses,  knows  their  whole 
content  pooled  together,  knows  their  relations 

200 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

to  one  another,  and  knows  of  just  how  much 
each  one  of  them  is  ignorant. 

The  two  types  of  witnessing  are  here  pal- 
pably non-identical.  We  get  a pluralism,  not  a 
monism,  out  of  them.  In  my  psychology-chap- 
ter I had  resorted  openly  to  such  pluralism, 
treating  each  total  field  of  consciousness  as  a 
distinct  entity,  and  maintaining  that  the  higher 
fields  merely  supersede  the  lower  functionally 
by  knowing  more  about  the  same  objects. 

The  monists  themselves  writhe  like  worms 
on  the  hook  to  escape  pluralistic  or  at  least 
dualistic  language,  but  they  cannot  escape  it. 
They  speak  of  the  eternal  and  the  temporal 
‘points  of  view’;  of  the  universe  in  its  infinite 
‘ aspect  ’ or  in  its  finite  ‘ capacity  ’ ; they  say  that 
‘ qua  absolute’  it  is  one  thing,  ‘ qua  relative’ 
another ; they  contrast  its  ‘ truth  ’ with  its  ‘ ap- 
pearances ’ ; they  distinguish  the  total  from  the 
partial  way  of  ‘ taking  ’ it,  etc. ; but  they  for- 
get that,  on  idealistic  principles,  to  make  such 
distinctions  is  tantamount  to  making  different 
beings,  or  at  any  rate  that  varying  points  of 
view,  aspects,  appearances,  wTays  of  taking, 

201 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

and  the  like,  are  meaningless  phrases  unless 
we  suppose  outside  of  the  unchanging  content 
of  reality  a diversity  of  witnesses  who  experi- 
ence or  take  it  variously,  the  absolute  mind 
being  just  the  witness  that  takes  it  most  com- 
pletely. 

For  consider  the  matter  one  moment  longer, 
if  you  can.  Ask  what  this  notion  implies,  of 
appearing  differently  from  different  points  of 
view.  If  there  be  no  outside  witness,  a thing 
can  appear  only  to  itself,  the  eaches  or  parts  to 
their  several  selves  temporally,  the  all  or  whole 
to  itself  eternally.  Different  ‘selves  ’ thus  break 
out  inside  of  what  the  absolutist  insists  to  be 
intrinsically  one  fact.  But  how  can  what  is 
actually  one  be  effectively  so  many  ? Put  your 
witnesses  anywhere,  whether  outside  or  inside 
of  what  is  witnessed,  in  the  last  resort  your 
witnesses  must  on  idealistic  principles  be  dis- 
tinct, for  what  is  witnessed  is  different. 

I fear  that  I am  expressing  myself  with  ter- 
rible obscurity  — some  of  you,  I know,  are 
groaning  over  the  logic-chopping.  Be  a plural- 
ist or  be  a monist,  you  say,  for  heaven’s  sake, 

202 


Y.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


no  matter  which,  so  long  as  you  stop  arguing. 
It  reminds  one  of  Chesterton’s  epigram  that 
the  only  thing  that  ever  drives  human  beings 
insane  is  logic.  But  whether  I be  sane  or  insane, 
you  cannot  fail,  even  tho  you  be  transcenden- 
talists  yourselves,  to  recognize  to  some  degree 
by  my  trouble  the  difficulties  that  beset  monis- 
tic idealism.  What  boots  it  to  call  the  parts  and 
the  whole  the  same  body  of  experience,  when  in 
the  same  breath  you  have  to  say  that  the  all  ‘ as 
such’  means  one  sort  of  experience  and  each 
part  ‘ as  such  ’ means  another  ? 

Difficulties,  then,  so  far,  but  no  stable  solu- 
tion as  yet,  for  I have  been  talking  only  criti- 
cally. You  will  probably  be  relieved  to  hear, 
then,  that  having  rounded  this  corner,  I shall 
begin  to  consider  what  may  be  the  possibilities 
of  getting  farther. 

To  clear  the  path,  I beg  you  first  to  note  one 
point.  What  has  so  troubled  my  logical  con- 
science is  not  so  much  the  absolute  by  itself 
as  the  whole  class  of  suppositions  of  which  it 
is  the  supreme  example,  collective  experiences 
namely,  claiming  identity  with  their  constitu- 

203 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


ent  parts,  yet  experiencing  things  quite  differ- 
ently from  these  latter.  If  any  such  collective 
experience  can  be,  then  of  course,  so  far  as  the 
mere  logic  of  the  case  goes,  the  absolute  may 
be.  In  a previous  lecture  I have  talked  against 
the  absolute  from  other  points  of  view.  In  this 
lecture  I have  meant  merely  to  take  it  as  the 
example  most  prominent  at  Oxford  of  the  thing 
which  has  given  me  such  logical  perplexity. 
I don’t  logically  see  how  a collective  expe- 
rience of  any  grade  whatever  can  be  treated 
as  logically  identical  with  a lot  of  distributive 
experiences.  They  form  two  different  concepts. 
The  absolute  happens  to  be  the  only  collective 
experience  concerning  which  Oxford  idealists 
have  urged  the  identity,  so  I took  it  as  my  pre- 
rogative instance.  But  Fechner’s  earth-soul, 

<D 

or  any  stage  of  being  below  or  above  that, 
would  have  served  my  purpose  just  as  well: 
the  same  logical  objection  applies  to  these  col- 
lective experiences  as  to  the  absolute. 

So  much,  then,  in  order  that  you  may  not  be 
confused  about  my  strategical  objective.  The 
real  point  to  defend  against  the  logic  that  I 

204 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

have  used  is  the  identity  of  the  collective  and 
distributive  anyhow,  not  the  particular  exam- 
ple of  such  identity  known  as  the  absolute. 

So  now  for  the  directer  question.  Shall  wTe 
say  that  every  complex  mental  fact  is  a sepa- 
rate psychic  entity  succeeding  upon  a lot  of 
other  psychic  entities  which  are  erroneously 
called  its  parts,  and  superseding  them  in  func- 
tion, but  not  literally  being  composed  of  them  ? 
This  was  the  course  I took  in  my  psychology ; 
and  if  followed  in  theology,  we  should  have  to 
deny  the  absolute  as  usually  conceived,  and 
replace  it  by  the  ‘ God  ’ of  theism.  We  should 
also  have  to  deny  Fechner’s  ‘earth-soul’  and 
all  other  superhuman  collections  of  experience 
of  every  grade,  so  far  at  least  as  these  are  held 
to  be  compounded  of  our  simpler  souls  in  the 
w’ay  "which  Fechner  believed  in ; and  we  should 
have  to  make  all  these  denials  in  the  name  of 
the  incorruptible  logic  of  self-identity,  teach- 
ing us  that  to  call  a thing  and  its  other  the  same 
is  to  commit  the  crime  of  self-contradiction. 

But  if  we  realize  the  whole  philosophic  situa- 
tion thus  produced,  we  see  that  it  is  almost  in- 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


tolerable.  Loyal  to  the  logical  kind  of  rational- 
ity, it  is  disloyal  to  every  other  kind.  It  makes 
the  universe  discontinuous.  These  fields  of 
experience  that  replace  each  other  so  punctually, 
each  knowing  the  same  matter,  but  in  ever- 
widening  contexts,  from  simplest  feeling  up  to 
absolute  knowledge,  can  they  have  no  being  in 
common  when  their  cognitive  function  is  so 
manifestly  common  ? The  regular  succession 
of  them  is  on  such  terms  an  unintelligible  mir- 
acle. If  you  reply  that  their  common  object  is 
of  itself  enough  to  make  the  many  witnesses 
continuous,  the  same  implacable  logic  follows 
you — how  can  one  and  the  same  object  appear 
so  variously  ? Its  diverse  appearances  break 
it  into  a plurality;  and  our  world  of  objects 
then  falls  into  discontinuous  pieces  quite  as 
much  as  did  our  world  of  subjects.  The 
resultant  irrationality  is  really  intolerable. 

I said  awhile  ago  that  I was  envious  of  Fech- 
ner  and  the  other  pantheists  because  I myself 
wanted  the  same  freedom  that  I saw  them  un- 
scrupulously enjoying,  of  letting  mental  fields 
compound  themselves  and  so  make  the  uni- 

206 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


verse  more  continuous,  but  that  my  conscience 
held  me  prisoner.  In  my  heart  of  hearts,  how- 
ever, I knew  that  my  situation  was  absurd  and 
could  be  only  provisional.  That  secret  of  a con- 
tinuous life  which  the  universe  knows  by  heart 
and  acts  on  every  instant  cannot  be  a contra- 
diction incarnate.  If  logic  says  it  is  one,  so 
much  the  worse  for  logic.  Logic  being  the  lesser 
thing,  the  static  incomplete  abstraction,  must 
succumb  to  reality,  not  reality  to  logic.  Our 
intelligence  cannot  wall  itself  up  alive,  like  a 
pupa  in  its  chrysalis.  It  must  at  any  cost  keep 
on  speaking  terms  with  the  universe  that  en- 
gendered it.  Fechner,  Royce,  and  Hegel  seem 
on  the  truer  path.  Fechner  has  never  heard  of 
logic’s  veto,  Royce  hears  the  voice  but  cannilv 
ignores  the  utterances,  Hegel  hears  them  but 
to  spurn  them  — and  all  go  on  their  way 
rejoicing.  Shall  we  alone  obey  the  veto  ? 

Sincerely,  and  patiently  as  I could,  I strug- 
gled with  the  problem  for  years,  covering 
hundreds  of  sheets  of  paper  with  notes  and 
memoranda  and  discussions  with  myself  over 
the  difficulty.  How  can  many  consciousnesses 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

be  at  the  same  time  one  consciousness  ? How 
can  one  and  the  same  identical  fact  experience 
itself  so  diversely  ? The  struggle  was  vain ; I 
found  myself  in  an  impasse.  I saw  that  I must 
either  forswear  that  ‘psychology  without  a 
soul’  to  which  my  whole  psychological  and 
kantian  education  had  committed  me,  — I 
must,  in  short,  bring  back  distinct  spiritual 
agents  to  know  the  mental  states,  now  singly 
and  now  in  combination,  in  a word  bring  back 
scholasticism  and  common  sense  — or  else  I 
must  squarely  confess  the  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem impossible,  and  then  either  give  up  my 
intellectualistic  logic,  the  logic  of  identity,  and 
adopt  some  higher  (or  lower)  form  of  ration- 
ality, or,  finally,  face  the  fact  that  life  is  logi- 
cally irrational. 

Sincerely,  this  is  the  actual  trilemma  that 
confronts  every  one  of  us.  Those  of  you  who 
are  scholastic-minded,  or  simply  common-sense 
minded,  will  smile  at  the  elaborate  groans  of 
my  parturient  mountain  resulting  in  nothing 
but  this  mouse.  Accept  the  spiritual  agents,  for 
heaven’s  sake,  you  will  say,  and  leave  off  your 

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V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

ridiculous  pedantry.  Let  but  our  ‘ souls  ’ com- 
bine our  sensations  by  their  intellectual  facul- 
ties, and  let  but  ‘ God  ’ replace  the  pantheistic 
world-soul,  and  your  wheels  will  go  round 
again  — you  will  enjoy  both  life  and  logic 
together. 

This  solution  is  obvious  and  I know  that 
many  of  you  will  adopt  it.  It  is  comfortable, 
and  all  our  habits  of  speech  support  it.  Yet  it 
is  not  for  idle  or  fantastical  reasons  that  the 
notion  of  the  substantial  soul,  so  freely  used  by 
common  men  and  the  more  popular  philoso- 
phies, has  fallen  upon  such  evil  days,  and  has 
no  prestige  in  the  eyes  of  critical  thinkers.  It 
only  shares  the  fate  of  other  unrepresentable 
substances  and  principles.  They  are  without 
exception  all  so  barren  that  to  sincere  inquirers 
they  appear  as  little  more  than  names  mas- 
querading — Wo  die  begriffe  fehlen  da  stellt 
ein  wTort  zur  rechten  zeit  sich  ein.  You  see  no 
deeper  into  the  fact  that  a hundred  sensations 
get  compounded  or  known  together  by  think- 
ing that  a ‘soul’  does  the  compounding  than 
you  see  into  a man’s  living  eighty  years  by 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


thinking  of  him  as  an  octogenarian,  or  into 
our  having  five  fingers  by  calling  us  pentadac- 
tyls.  Souls  have  worn  out  both  themselves  and 
their  welcome,  that  is  the  plain  truth.  Philo- 
sophy ought  to  get  the  manifolds  of  experi- 
ence unified  on  principles  less  empty.  Like 
the  word  ‘cause,’  the  word  ‘soul’  is  but  a the- 
oretic stop-gap  — it  marks  a place  and  claims 
it  for  a future  explanation  to  occupy. 

This  being  our  post-humian  and  post-kant- 
ian  state  of  mind,  I will  ask  your  permission 
to  leave  the  soul  wholly  out  of  the  present 
discussion  and  to  consider  only  the  residual 
dilemma.  Some  day,  indeed,  souls  may  get 
their  innings  again  in  philosophy  — I am  quite 
ready  to  admit  that  possibility  — they  form  a 
category  of  thought  too  natural  to  the  human 
mind  to  expire  without  prolonged  resistance. 
But  if  the  belief  in  the  soul  ever  does  come  to 
life  after  the  many  funeral-discourses  which 
humian  and  kantian  criticism  have  preached 
over  it,  I am  sure  it  will  be  only  when  some 
one  has  found  in  the  term  a pragmatic  sig- 
nificance that  has  hitherto  eluded  observation. 

210 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


When  that  champion  speaks,  as  he  well  may 
speak  some  day,  it  will  be  time  to  consider 
souls  more  seriously. 

Let  us  leave  out  the  soul,  then,  and  confront 
what  I just  called  the  residual  dilemma.  Can 
we,  on  the  one  hand,  give  up  the  logic  of  iden- 
tity ? — can  we,  on  the  other,  believe  human 
experience  to  be  fundamentally  irrational  ? 
Neither  is  easy,  yet  it  would  seem  that  we 
must  do  one  or  the  other. 

Few  philosophers  have  had  the  frankness 
fairly  to  admit  the  necessity  of  choosing  be- 
tween the  ‘ horns  ’ offered.  Reality  must  be  ra- 
tional, they  have  said,  and  since  the  ordinary 
intellectual ist  logic  is  the  only  usual  test  of  ra- 
tionality, reality  and  logic  must  agree  ‘some- 
how.’ Hegel  was  the  first  non-mystical  writer 
to  face  the  dilemma  squarely  and  throw  away 
the  ordinary  logic,  saving  a pseudo-rationality 
for  the  universe  by  inventing  the  higher  logic 
of  the  ‘ dialectic  process.’  Bradley  holds  to  the 
intellectualist  logic,  and  by  dint  of  it  convicts 
the  human  universe  of  being  irrationality  in- 
carnate. But  what  must  be  and  can  be,  is,  he 


211 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


says ; there  must  and  can  be  relief  from  that 
irrationality;  and  the  absolute  must  already 
have  got  the  relief  in  secret  ways  of  its  own, 
impossible  for  us  to  guess  at.  We  of  course 
get  no  relief,  so  Bradley’s  is  a rather  ascetic 
doctrine.  Royce  and  Taylor  accept  similar 
solutions,  only  they  emphasize  the  irration- 
ality of  our  finite  universe  less  than  Bradley 
does ; and  Royce  in  particular,  being  unusually 
‘ thick  ’ for  an  idealist,  tries  to  bring  the  abso- 
lute’s secret  forms  of  relief  more  sympatheti- 
cally home  to  our  imagination. 

Well,  what  must  we  do  in  this  tragic  predica- 
ment ? For  my  own  part,  I have  finally  found 
myself  compelled  to  give  up  the  logic,  fairly, 
squarely,  and  irrevocably.  It  has  an  imperish- 
able use  in  human  life,  but  that  use  is  not  to 
make  us  theoretically  acquainted  with  the  es- 
sential nature  of  reality  — just  what  it  is  I can 
perhaps  suggest  to  you  a little  later.  Reality, 
life,  experience,  concreteness,  immediacy,  use 
what  word  you  will,  exceeds  our  logic,  over- 
flows and  surrounds  it.  If  you  like  to  employ 
words  eulogistically,  as  most  men  do,  and  so 

212 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

encourage  confusion,  you  may  say  that  reality 
obeys  a higher  logic,  or  enjoys  a higher  ration- 
ality. But  I think  that  even  eulogistic  words 
should  be  used  rather  to  distinguish  than  to 
commingle  meanings,  so  I prefer  bluntly  to  call 
reality  if  not  irrational  then  at  least  non-ra- 
tional  in  its  constitution,  — and  by  reality  here 
I mean  reality  where  things  happen , all  tempo- 
ral reality  without  exception.  I myself  find  no 
good  warrant  for  even  suspecting  the  existence 
of  any  reality  of  a higher  denomination  than 
that  distributed  and  strung-along  and  flowing 
sort  of  reality  which  we  finite  beings  swim  in. 
That  is  the  sort  of  reality  given  us,  and  that  is 
the  sort  with  which  logic  is  so  incommensur- 
able. If  there  be  any  higher  sort  of  reality  — 
the  ‘absolute,’  for  example  — that  sort,  by  the 
confession  of  those  who  believe  in  it,  is  still  less 
amenable  to  ordinary  logic ; it  transcends  logic 
and  is  therefore  still  less  rational  in  the  intel- 
lectualist  sense,  so  it  cannot  help  us  to  save 
our  logic  as  an  adequate  definer  and  confiner 
of  existence. 

These  sayings  will  sound  queer  and  dark, 
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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

probably  they  will  sound  quite  wild  or  child- 
ish in  the  absence  of  explanatory  comment. 
Only  the  persuasion  that  I soon  can  explain 
them,  if  not  satisfactorily  to  all  of  you,  at  least 
intelligibly,  emboldens  me  to  state  them  thus 
baldly  as  a sort  of  programme.  Please  take 
them  as  a thesis,  therefore,  to  be  defended 
by  later  pleading. 

I told  you  that  I had  long  and  sincerely 
wrestled  with  the  dilemma.  I have  now  to 
confess  (and  this  will  probably  re-animate 
your  interest)  that  I should  not  now  be  eman- 
cipated, not  now  subordinate  logic  with  so  very 
light  a heart,  or  throw  it  out  of  the  deeper 
regions  of  philosophy  to  take  its  rightful  and 
respectable  place  in  the  world  of  simple  human 
practice,  if  I had  not  been  influenced  by  a 
comparatively  young  and  very  original  french 
writer,  Professor  Henri  Bergson.  Reading  his 
works  is  what  has  made  me  bold.  If  I had  not 
read  Bergson,  I should  probably  still  be  black- 
ening endless  pages  of  paper  privately,  in  the 
hope  of  making  ends  meet  that  were  never 
meant  to  meet,  and  trying  to  discover  some 

214 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

mode  of  conceiving  the  behavior  of  reality 
which  should  leave  no  discrepancy  between  it 
and  the  accepted  laws  of  the  logic  of  identity. 
It  is  certain,  at  any  rate,  that  without  the  con- 
fidence which  being  able  to  lean  on  Bergson’s 
authority  gives  me  I should  never  have  ven- 
tured to  urge  these  particular  views  of  mine 
upon  this  ultra-critical  audience. 

I must  therefore,  in  order  to  make  my  own 
views  more  intelligible,  give  some  preliminary 
account  of  the  bergsonian  philosophy.  But 
here,  as  in  Fechner’s  case,  I must  confine  my- 
self only  to  the  features  that  are  essential  to 
the  present  purpose,  and  not  entangle  you  in 
collateral  details,  however  interesting  other- 
wise. For  our  present  purpose,  then,  the  essen- 
tial contribution  of  Bergson  to  philosophy  is 
his  criticism  of  intellectualism.  In  my  opinion 
he  has  killed  intellectualism  definitively  and 
without  hope  of  recovery.  I don’t  see  how  it 
can  ever  revive  again  in  its  ancient  platoniz- 
ing  role  of  claiming  to  be  the  most  authentic, 
intimate,  and  exhaustive  definer  of  the  nature 
of  reality.  Others,  as  Kant  for  example,  have 

215 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


denied  intellectualism’s  pretensions  to  define 
reality  an  sich  or  in  its  absolute  capaeity ; but 
Kant  still  leaves  it  laying  down  laws  — and 
laws  from  which  there  is  no  appeal  — to  all 
our  human  experience;  while  what  Bergson 
denies  is  that  its  methods  give  any  adequate 
account  of  this  human  experience  in  its  very 
finiteness.  Just  how  Bergson  accomplishes  all 
this  I must  try  to  tell  in  my  imperfect  way  in  the 
next  lecture ; but  since  I have  already  used  the 
words  ‘logic,’  ‘logic  of  identity,’  ‘ intelleotual- 
istic  logic,’  and  ‘ intellectualism’  so  often,  and 
sometimes  used  them  as  if  they  required  no 
particular  explanation,  it  will  be  wise  at  this 
point  to  say  at  greater  length  than  heretofore 
in  what  sense  I take  these  terms  when  I claim 
that  Bergson  has  refuted  their  pretension  to 
decide  what  reality  can  or  cannot  be.  Just 
what  I mean  by  intellectualism  is  therefore 
what  I shall  try  to  give  a fuller  idea  of  dur- 
ing the  remainder  of  this  present  hour. 

In  recent  controversies  some  participants 
have  shown  resentment  at  being  classed  as  in- 
tellectualists.  I mean  to  use  the  word  dispar- 

216 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


agmgly,  but  shall  be  sorry  if  it  works  offence. 
Intellectualism  has  its  source  in  the  faculty 
which  gives  us  our  chief  superiority  to  the 
brutes,  our  power,  namely,  of  translating  the 
crude  flux  of  our  merely  feeling-experience  into 
a conceptual  order.  An  immediate  experience, 
as  yet  unnamed  or  classed,  is  a mere  that  that 
we  undergo,  a thing  that  asks,  ‘ What  am  I ?’ 
When  we  name  and  class  it,  we  say  for  the  first 
time  what  it  is,  and  all  these  whats  are  abstract 
names  or  concepts.  Each  concept  means  a par- 
ticular kind  of  thing,  and  as  things  seem  once 
for  all  to  have  been  created  in  kinds,  a far 
more  efficient  handling  of  a given  bit  of  expe- 
rience begins  as  soon  as  we  have  classed  the 
various  parts  of  it.  Once  classed,  a thing  can 
be  treated  by  the  law  of  its  class,  and  the  ad- 
vantages are  endless.  Both  theoretically  and 
practically  this  power  of  framing  abstract  con- 
cepts is  one  of  the  sublimest  of  our  human  pre- 
rogatives. We  come  back  into  the  concrete 
from  our  journey  into  these  abstractions,  with 
an  increase  both  of  vision  and  of  power.  It  is 
no  wonder  that  earlier  thinkers,  forgetting  that 

217 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


concepts  are  only  man-made  extracts  from  the 
temporal  flux,  should  have  ended  by  treating 
them  as  a superior  type  of  being,  bright, 
changeless,  true,  divine,  and  utterly  opposed 
in  nature  to  the  turbid,  restless  lower  world. 
The  latter  then  appears  as  but  their  corruption 
and  falsification. 

Intellectualism  in  the  vicious  sense  began 
when  Socrates  and  Plato  taught  that  what  a 
thing  really  is,  is  told  us  by  its  definition.  Ever 
since  Socrates  we  have  been  taught  that  reality 
consists  of  essences,  not  of  appearances,  and 
that  the  essences  of  things  are  known  whenever 
we  know  their  definitions.  So  first  we  identify 
the  thing  with  a concept  and  then  we  identify 
the  concept  with  a definition,  and  only  then, 
inasmuch  as  the  thing  is  whatever  the  defini- 
tion expresses,  are  we  sure  of  apprehending  the 
real  essence  of  it  or  the  full  truth  about  it. 

So  far  no  harm  is  done.  The  misuse  of  con- 
cepts begins  with  the  habit  of  employing  them 
privatively  as  well  as  positively,  using  them  not 
merely  to  assign  properties  to  things,  but  to 
deny  the  very  properties  with  which  the  things 

218 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


sensibly  present  themselves.  Logic  can  extract 
all  its  possible  consequences  from  any  defini- 
tion, and  the  logician  who  is  unerbittlich  conse- 
quent is  often  tempted,  when  he  cannot  extract 
a certain  property  from  a definition,  to  deny 
that  the  concrete  object  to  which  the  defini- 
tion applies  can  possibly  possess  that  property. 
The  definition  that  fails  to  yield  it  must  ex- 
clude or  negate  it.  This  is  Hegel’s  regular 
method  of  establishing  his  system. 

It  is  but  the  old  story,  of  a useful  practice 
first  becoming  a method,  then  a habit,  and 
finally  a tyranny  that  defeats  the  end  it  was 
used  for.  Concepts,  first  employed  to  make 
things  intelligible,  are  clung  to  even  when 
they  make  them  unintelligible.  Thus  it  comes 
that  when  once  you  have  conceived  things  as 
‘independent,’  you  must  proceed  to  deny  the 
possibility  of  any  connexion  whatever  among 
them,  because  the  notion  of  connexion  is  not 
contained  in  the  definition  of  independence. 
For  a like  reason  you  must  deny  any  possible 
forms  or  modes  of  unity  among  things  which 
you  have  begun  by  defining  as  a ‘many.’  We 

219 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

have  cast  a glance  at  Hegel’s  and  Bradley’s 
use  of  this  sort  of  reasoning,  and  you  will  re- 
member Sigwart’s  epigram  that  according  to 
it  a horseman  can  never  in  his  life  go  on  foot, 
or  a photographer  ever  do  anything  but  photo- 
graph. 

The  classic  extreme  in  this  direction  is  the 
denial  of  the  possibility  of  change,  and  the  con- 
sequent branding  of  the  world  of  change  as  un- 
real, by  certain  philosophers.  The  definition  of 
A is  changeless,  so  is  the  definition  of  B.  The 
one  definition  cannot  change  into  the  other,  so 
the  notion  that  a concrete  thing  A should 
change  into  another  concrete  thing  B is  made 
out  to  be  contrary  to  reason.  In  Mr.  Bradley’s 
difficulty  in  seeing  how  sugar  can  be  sweet 
intellectualism  outstrips  itself  and  becomes 
openly  a sort  of  verbalism.  Sugar  is  just  sugar 
and  sweet  is  just  sweet;  neither  is  the  other; 
nor  can  the  word  ‘is’  ever  be  understood  to 
join  any  subject  to  its  predicate  rationally. 
Nothing  ‘between’  things  can  connect  them, 
for  ‘between’  is  just  that  third  thing,  ‘between,’ 
and  would  need  itself  to  be  connected  to  the 

220 


V.  COMPOUNDING  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 


first  and  second  things  by  two  still  finer  be- 
tweens,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum. 

The  particular  intellectualistic  difficulty  that 
had  held  my  own  thought  so  long  in  a vise  was, 
as  we  have  seen  at  such  tedious  length,  the  im- 
possibility of  understanding  how  ‘your’  experi- 
ence and  ‘ mine,’  which  ‘ as  such  ’ are  defined  as 
not  conscious  of  each  other,  can  nevertheless 
at  the  same  time  be  members  of  a world-expe- 
rience defined  expressly  as  having  all  its  parts 
co-conscious,  or  known  together.  The  defini- 
tions are  contradictory,  so  the  things  defined 
can  in  no  way  be  united.  You  see  how  unintel- 
ligible intellectualism  here  seems  to  make  the 
world  of  our  most  accomplished  philosophers. 
Neither  as  they  use  it  nor  as  we  use  it  does  it 
do  anything  but  make  nature  look  irrational 
and  seem  impossible. 

In  my  next  lecture,  using  Bergson  as  my 
principal  topic,  I shall  enter  into  more  concrete 
details  and  try,  by  giving  up  intellectualism 
frankly,  to  make,  if  not  the  world,  at  least  my 
own  general  thesis,  less  unintelligible. 


VI 


BERGSON  AND  HIS  CRITIQUE  OF 
INTELLECTUALISM 


LECTURE  VI 


BERGSON  AND  HIS  CRITIQUE  OF 
INTELLECTUALISM 

I gave  you  a very  stiff  lecture  last  time,  and  I 
fear  that  this  one  can  be  little  less  so.  The  best 
way  of  entering  into  it  will  be  to  begin  imme- 
diately with  Bergson’s  philosophy,  since  I told 
you  that  that  was  what  had  led  me  personally 
to  renounce  the  intellectualistic  method  and 
the  current  notion  that  logic  is  an  adequate 
measure  of  what  can  or  cannot  be. 

Professor  Henri  Bergson  is  a young  man, 
comparatively,  as  influential  philosophers  go, 
having  been  born  at  Paris  in  1859.  His  career 
has  been  the  perfectly  routine  one  of  a suc- 
cessful french  professor.  Entering  the  ecole 
normale  superieure  at  the  age  of  twenty-two, 
he  spent  the  next  seventeen  years  teaching  at 
lycees,  provincial  or  parisian,  until  his  fortieth 
year,  when  he  was  made  professor  at  the  said 
ecole  normale.  Since  1900  he  has  been  pro- 
fessor at  the  College  de  France,  and  member 
of  the  Institute  since  1900. 


225 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

So  far  as  the  outward  facts  go,  Bergson’s 
career  has  then  been  commonplace  to  the  ut- 
most. Neither  one  of  Taine’s  famous  principles 
of  explanation  of  great  men,  the  race,  the  envi- 
ronment, or  the  moment,  no,  nor  all  three  to- 
gether, will  explain  that  peculiar  way  of  looking 
at  things  that  constitutes  his  mental  individu- 
ality. Originality  in  men  dates  from  nothing 
previous,  other  things  date  from  it,  rather.  I 
have  to  confess  that  Bergson’s  originality  is  so 
profuse  that  many  of  his  ideas  baffle  me  entirely . 
I doubt  whether  any  one  understands  him  all 
over,  so  to  speak ; and  I am  sure  that  he  would 
himself  be  the  first  to  see  that  this  must  be,  and 
to  confess  that  things  which  he  himself  has  not 
yet  thought  out  clearly,  had  yet  to  be  mentioned 
and  have  a tentative  place  assigned  them  in  his 
philosophy.  Many  of  us  are  profusely  original, 
in  that  no  man  can  understand  us — violently 
peculiar  ways  of  looking  at  things  are  no  great 
rarity.  The  rarity  is  when  great  peculiarity  of 
vision  is  allied  with  great  lucidity  and  unusual 
command  of  all  the  classic  expository  appara- 
tus. Bergson’s  resources  in  the  way  of  erudi- 

226 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 


tion  are  remarkable,  and  in  the  way  of  expres- 
sion they  are  simply  phenomenal.  This  is  why 
in  France,  where  I’art  de  bien  dire  counts  for 
so  much  and  is  so  sure  of  appreciation,  he  has 
immediately  taken  so  eminent  a place  in  public 
esteem.  Old-fashioned  professors,  whom  his 
ideas  quite  fail  to  satisfy,  nevertheless  speak  of 
his  talent  almost  with  bated  breath,  while  the 
youngsters  flock  to  him  as  to  a master. 

If  anything  can  make  hard  things  easy  to  fol- 
low, it  is  a style  like  Bergson’s.  A ‘ straightfor- 
ward ’ style,  an  american  reviewer  lately  called 
it ; failing  to  see  that  such  straightforwardness 
means  a flexibility  of  verbal  resource  that  fol- 
lows the  thought  without  a crease  or  wrinkle, 
as  elastic  silk  underclothing  follows  the  move- 
ments of  one’s  body.  The  lucidity  of  Bergson’s 
way  of  putting  things  is  what  all  readers  are 
first  struck  by.  It  seduces  you  and  bribes 
you  in  advance  to  become  his  disciple.  It  is  a 
miracle,  and  he  a real  magician. 

M.  Bergson,  if  I am  rightly  informed,  came 
into  philosophy  through  the  gateway  of  math- 
ematics. The  old  antinomies  of  the  infinite 

227 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

were,  I imagine,  the  irritant  that  first  woke  his 
faculties  from  their  dogmatic  slumber.  You  all 
remember  Zeno’s  famous  paradox,  or  sophism, 
as  many  of  our  logic  books  still  call  it,  of 
Achilles  and  the  tortoise.  Give  that  reptile 
ever  so  small  an  advance  and  the  swift  run- 
ner Achilles  can  never  overtake  him,  much  less 
get  ahead  of  him ; for  if  space  and  time  are  in- 
finitely divisible  (as  our  intellects  tell  us  they 
must  be) , by  the  time  Achilles  reaches  the  tor- 
toise’s starting-point,  the  tortoise  has  already 
got  ahead  of  that  starting-point,  and  so  on  ad 
infinitum,  the  interval  between  the  pursuer 
and  the  pursued  growing  endlessly  minuter, 
but  never  becoming  wholly  obliterated.  The 
common  way  of  showing  up  the  sophism  here 
is  by  pointing  out  the  ambiguity  of  the  expres- 
sion ‘never  can  overtake.’  What  the  word 
‘ never  ’ falsely  suggests,  it  is  said,  is  an  infinite 
duration  of  time ; what  it  really  means  is  the 
inexhaustible  number  of  the  steps  of  which 
the  overtaking  must  consist.  But  if  these  steps 
are  infinitely  short,  a finite  time  will  suffice  for 
them ; and  in  point  of  fact  they  do  rapidly  con- 

228 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

verge,  whatever  be  the  original  interval  or  the 
contrasted  speeds,  toward  infinitesimal  short- 
ness. This  proportionality  of  the  shortness  of 
the  times  to  that  of  the  spaces  required  frees 
us,  it  is  claimed,  from  the  sophism  which  the 
word  ‘never’  suggests. 

But  this  criticism  misses  Zeno’s  point  en- 
tirely. Zeno  would  have  been  perfectly  willing 
to  grant  that  if  the  tortoise  can  be  overtaken 
at  all,  he  can  be  overtaken  in  (say)  twenty 
seconds,  but  he  would  still  have  insisted  that 
he  can’t  be  overtaken  at  all.  Leave  Achilles 
and  the  tortoise  out  of  the  account  altogether, 
he  would  have  said  — they  complicate  the 
case  unnecessarily.  Take  any  single  process 
of  change  whatever,  take  the  twenty  seconds 
themselves  elapsing.  If  time  be  infinitely  divis- 
ible, and  it  must  be  so  on  intellectualist  princi- 
ples, they  simply  cannot  elapse,  their  end  can- 
not be  reached;  for  no  matter  how  much  of 
them  has  already  elapsed,  before  the  remain- 
der, however  minute,  can  have  wholly  elapsed, 
the  earlier  half  of  it  must  first  have  elapsed. 
And  this  ever  re-arising  need  of  making  the 

229 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


earlier  half  elapse  first  leaves  time  with  always 
something  to  do  before  the  last  thing  is  done, 
so  that  the  last  thing  never  gets  done.  Ex- 
pressed in  bare  numbers,  it  is  like  the  conver- 
gent series  \ plus  \ plus  | . . . , of  which  the 
limit  is  one.  But  this  limit,  simply  because  it 
is  a limit,  stands  outside  the  series,  the  value 
of  which  approaches  it  indefinitely  but  never 
touches  it.  If  in  the  natural  world  there  were 
no  other  way  of  getting  things  save  by  such  suc- 
cessive addition  of  their  logically  involved  frac- 
tions, no  complete  units  or  whole  things  would 
ever  come  into  being,  for  the  fractions’  sum 
would  always  leave  a remainder.  But  in  point 
of  fact  nature  does  n’t  make  eggs  by  making 
first  half  an  egg,  then  a quarter,  then  an  eighth, 
etc.,  and  adding  them  together.  She  either 
makes  a whole  egg  at  once  or  none  at  all,  and  so 
of  all  her  other  units.  It  is  only  in  the  sphere  of 
change,  then,  where  one  phase  of  a thing  must 
needs  come  into  being  before  another  phase 
can  come  that  Zeno’s  paradox  gives  trouble. 

And  it  gives  trouble  then  only  if  the  suc- 
cession of  steps  of  change  be  infinitely  divisi- 

230 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 


ble.  If  a bottle  had  to  be  emptied  by  an  in- 
finite number  of  successive  decrements,  it  is 
mathematically  impossible  that  the  emptying 
should  ever  positively  terminate.  In  point  of 
fact,  however,  bottles  and  coffee-pots  empty 
themselves  by  a finite  number  of  decrements, 
each  of  definite  amount.  Either  a whole  drop 
emerges  or  nothing  emerges  from  the  spout. 
If  all  change  went  thus  drop- wise,  so  to  speak, 
if  real  time  sprouted  or  grew  by  units  of  dura- 
tion of  determinate  amount,  just  as  our  percep- 
tions of  it  grow  by  pulses,  there  would  be  no 
zenonian  paradoxes  or  kantian  antinomies  to 
trouble  us.  All  our  sensible  experiences,  as  we 
get  them  immediately,  do  thus  change  by  dis- 
crete pulses  of  perception,  each  of  which  keeps 
us  saying  ‘more,  more,  more,’  or  ‘less,  less, 
less,’  as  the  definite  increments  or  diminutions 
make  themselves  felt.  The  discreteness  is  still 
more  obvious  when,  instead  of  old  things 
changing,  they  cease,  or  when  altogether  new 
things  come.  Fechner’s  term  of  the  ‘threshold,’ 
which  has  played  such  a part  in  the  psychology 
of  perception,  is  only  one  way  of  naming  the 

231 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


quantitative  discreteness  in  the  change  of  all 
our  sensible  experiences.  They  come  to  us  in 
drops.  Time  itself  comes  in  drops. 

Our  ideal  decomposition  of  the  drops  which 
are  all  that  we  feel  into  still  finer  fractions  is  but 
an  incident  in  that  great  transformation  of  the 
perceptual  order  into  a conceptual  order  of 
which  I spoke  in  my  last  lecture.  It  is  made  in 
the  interest  of  our  rationalizing  intellect  solely. 
The  times  directly  felt  in  the  experiences  of  liv- 
ing subjects  have  originally  no  common  mea- 
sure. Let  a lump  of  sugar  melt  in  a glass,  to  use 
one  of  M.  Bergson’s  instances.  We  feel  the  time 
to  be  long  while  waiting  for  the  process  to  end, 
but  who  knows  how  long  or  how  short  it  feels 
to  the  sugar  ? All  felt  times  coexist  and  over- 
lap or  compenetrate  each  other  thus  vaguely, 
but  the  artifice  of  plotting  them  on  a common 
scale  helps  us  to  reduce  their  aboriginal  confu- 
sion, and  it  helps  us  still  more  to  plot,  against 
the  same  scale,  the  successive  possible  steps 
into  which  nature’s  various  changes  may  be 
resolved,  either  sensibly  or  conceivably.  We 
thus  straighten  out  the  aboriginal  privacy  and 

232 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

vagueness,  and  can  date  things  publicly,  as  it 
were,  and  by  each  other.  The  notion  of  one 
objective  and  ‘evenly  flowing’  time,  cut  into 
numbered  instants,  applies  itself  as  a common 
measure  to  all  the  steps  and  phases,  no  matter 
how  many,  into  which  wTe  cut  the  processes  of 
nature.  They  are  now  definitely  contemporary, 
or  later  or  earlier  one  than  another,  and  we 
can  handle  them  mathematically,  as  we  say, 
and  far  better,  practically  as  well  as  theoreti- 
cally, for  having  thus  correlated  them  one  to 
one  with  each  other  on  the  common  schematic 
or  conceptual  time-scale. 

Motion,  to  take  a good  example,  is  originally 
a turbid  sensation,  of  which  the  native  shape  is 
perhaps  best  preserved  in  the  phenomenon  of 
vertigo.  In  vertigo  we  feel  that  movement  is, 
and  is  more  or  less  violent  or  rapid,  more  or 
less  in  this  direction  or  that,  more  or  less  alarm- 
ing or  sickening.  But  a man  subject  to  vertigo 
may  gradually  learn  to  co-ordinate  his  felt 
motion  with  his  real  position  and  that  of  other 
things,  and  intellectualize  it  enough  to  succeed 
at  last  in  walking  without  staggering.  The 

233 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

mathematical  mind  similarly  organizes  motion 
in  its  way,  putting  it  into  a logical  definition : 
motion  is  now  conceived  as  ‘ the  occupancy  of 
serially  successive  points  of  space  at  serially 
successive  instants  of  time.’  With  such  a defi- 
nition we  escape  wholly  from  the  turbid  privacy 
of  sense.  But  do  we  not  also  escape  from 
sense-reality  altogether  ? Whatever  motion 
really  may  be,  it  surely  is  not  static ; but  the 
definition  we  have  gained  is  of  the  absolutely 
static.  It  gives  a set  of  one-to-one  relations  be- 
tween space-points  and  time-points,  which  re- 
lations themselves  are  as  fixed  as  the  points  are. 
It  gives  'positions  assignable  ad  infinitum,  but 
how  the  body  gets  from  one  position  to  another 
it  omits  to  mention.  The  body  gets  there  by 
moving,  of  course ; but  the  conceived  positions, 
however  numerously  multiplied,  contain  no 
element  of  movement,  so  Zeno,  using  nothing 
but  them  in  his  discussion,  has  no  alternative 
but  to  say  that  our  intellect  repudiates  motion 
as  a non-reality.  Intellectualism  here  does 
what  I said  it  does  — it  makes  experience  less 
instead  of  more  intelligible. 

234 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

We  of  course  need  a stable  scheme  of  con- 
cepts, stably  related  with  one  another,  to  lay 
hold  of  our  experiences  and  to  co-ordinate  them 
withal.  When  an  experience  comes  with  suffi- 
cient saliency  to  stand  out,  we  keep  the  thought 
of  it  for  future  use,  and  store  it  in  our  con- 
ceptual system.  What  does  not  of  itself  stand 
out,  we  learn  to  cut  out ; so  the  system  grows 
completer,  and  new  reality,  as  it  comes,  gets 
named  after  and  conceptually  strung  upon  this 
or  that  element  of  it  which  we  have  already 
established.  The  immutability  of  such  an  ab- 
stract system  is  its  great  practical  merit;  the 
same  identical  terms  and  relations  in  it  can 
always  be  recovered  and  referred  to  — change 
itself  is  just  such  an  unalterable  concept.  But 
all  these  abstract  concepts  are  but  as  flowers 
gathered,  they  are  only  moments  dipped  out 
from  the  stream  of  time,  snap-shots  taken,  as 
by  a kinetoscopic  camera,  at  a life  that  in  its 
original  coming  is  continuous.  Useful  as  they 
are  as  samples  of  the  garden,  or  to  re-enter  the 
stream  with,  or  to  insert  in  our  revolving  lantern, 
they  have  no  value  but  these  practical  values. 

235 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

You  cannot  explain  by  them  what  makes  any 
single  phenomenon  be  or  go  — you  merely  dot 
out  the  path  of  appearances  which  it  traverses. 
For  you  cannot  make  continuous  being  out  of 
discontinuities,  and  your  concepts  are  discon- 
tinuous. The  stages  into  which  you  analyze 
a change  are  states,  the  change  itself  goes  on 
between  them.  It  lies  along  their  intervals, 
inhabits  what  your  definition  fails  to  gather 
up,  and  thus  eludes  conceptual  explanation 
altogether. 

‘When  the  mathematician,’  Bergson  writes, 
‘ calculates  the  state  of  a system  at  the  end  of  a 
time  t , nothing  need  prevent  him  from  suppos- 
ing that  betweenwhiles  the  universe  vanishes, 
in  order  suddenly  to  appear  again  at  the  due 
moment  in  the  new  configuration.  It  is  only 
the  2-th  moment  that  counts  — that  which  flows 
throughout  the  intervals,  namely  real  time, 
plays  no  part  in  his  calculation.  ...  In  short, 
the  world  on  which  the  mathematician  oper- 
ates is  a world  which  dies  and  is  born  anew  at 
every  instant,  like  the  world  which  Descartes 
thought  of  when  he  spoke  of  a continued  crea- 

236 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 


tion.’  To  know  adequately  what  really  hap- 
pens we  ought,  Bergson  insists,  to  see  into 
the  intervals,  but  the  mathematician  sees  only 
their  extremities.  He  fixes  only  a few  results, 
he  dots  a curve  and  then  interpolates,  he  sub- 
stitutes a tracing  for  a reality. 

This  being  so  undeniably  the  case,  the  his- 
tory of  the  way  in  which  philosophy  has  dealt 
with  it  is  curious.  The  ruling  tradition  in  phi- 
losophy has  always  been  the  platonic  and  aris- 
totelian  belief  that  fixity  is  a nobler  and  wor- 
thier thing  than  change.  Reality  must  be  one 
and  unalterable.  Concepts,  being  themselves 
fixities,  agree  best  with  this  fixed  nature  of 
truth,  so  that  for  any  knowledge  of  ours  to  be 
quite  true  it  must  be  knowledge  by  universal 
concepts  rather  than  by  particular  experiences, 
for  these  notoriously  are  mutable  and  corrupti- 
ble. This  is  the  tradition  known  as  rationalism 
in  philosophy,  and  what  I have  called  intel- 
lectualism  is  only  the  extreme  application  of  it. 
In  spite  of  sceptics  and  empiricists,  in  spite  of 
Protagoras,  Hume,  and  James  Mill,  rational- 
ism has  never  been  seriously  questioned,  for 

237 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


its  sharpest  critics  have  always  had  a tender 
place  in  their  hearts  for  it,  and  have  obeyed 
some  of  its  mandates.  They  have  not  been 
consistent;  they  have  played  fast  and  loose 
with  the  enemy;  and  Bergson  alone  has  been 
radical. 

To  show  what  I mean  by  this,  let  me  con- 
trast his  procedure  with  that  of  some  of  the 
transcendentalist  philosophers  whom  I have 
lately  mentioned.  Coming  after  Kant,  these 
pique  themselves  on  being  ‘critical,’  on  build- 
ing in  fact  upon  Kant’s  ‘ critique  ’ of  pure 
reason.  What  that  critique  professed  to  estab- 
lish was  this,  that  concepts  do  not  apprehend 
reality,  but  only  such  appearances  as  our  senses 
feed  out  to  them.  They  give  immutable  intel- 
lectual forms  to  these  appearances,  it  is  true, 
but  the  reality  an  sich  from  which  in  ultimate 
resort  the  sense-appearances  have  to  come 
remains  forever  unintelligible  to  our  intellect. 
Take  motion,  for  example.  Sensibly,  motion 
comes  in  drops,  waves,  or  pulses ; either  some 
actual  amount  of  it,  or  none,  being  appre- 
hended. This  amount  is  the  datum  or  gabe 

238 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

which  reality  feeds  out  to  our  intellectual  fac- 
ulty; but  our  intellect  makes  of  it  a task  or 
aufgabe  — this  pun  is  one  of  the  most  memo- 
rable of  Kant’s  formulas  — and  insists  that  in 
every  pulse  of  it  an  infinite  number  of  succes- 
sive minor  pulses  shall  be  ascertainable.  These 
minor  pulses  we  can  indeed  go  on  to  ascertain 
or  to  compute  indefinitely  if  we  have  patience ; 
but  it  would  contradict  the  definition  of  an 
infinite  number  to  suppose  the  endless  series 
of  them  to  have  actually  counted  themselves 
out  piecemeal.  Zeno  made  this  manifest;  so 
the  infinity  which  our  intellect  requires  of  the 
sense-datum  is  thus  a future  and  potential 
rather  than  a past  and  actual  infinity  of  struc- 
ture. The  datum  after  it  has  made  itself  must 
be  decomposa&Ze  ad  infinitum  by  our  concep- 
tion, but  of  the  steps  by  which  that  structure 
actually  got  composed  we  know  nothing.  Our 
intellect  casts,  in  short,  no  ray  of  light  on  the 
processes  by  which  experiences  get  made. 

Kant’s  monistic  successors  have  in  general 
found  the  data  of  immediate  experience  even 
more  self-contradictory,  when  intellectually 

239 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

treated,  than  Kant  did.  Not  only  the  charac- 
ter of  infinity  involved  in  the  relation  of  vari- 
ous empirical  data  to  their  ‘conditions,’  but  the 
very  notion  that  empirical  things  should  be  re- 
lated to  one  another  at  all,  has  seemed  to  them, 
when  the  intellectualistic  fit  was  upon  them, 
full  of  paradox  and  contradiction.  We  saw  in 
a former  lecture  numerous  instances  of  this 
from  Hegel,  Bradley,  Royce,  and  others.  We 
sawr  also  where  the  solution  of  such  an  intoler- 
able state  of  things  was  sought  for  by  these 
authors.  Whereas  Kant  had  placed  it  outside 
of  and  before  our  experience,  in  the  dinge 
an  sich  which  are  the  causes  of  the  latter,  his 
monistic  successors  all  look  for  it  either  after 
experience,  as  its  absolute  completion,  or  else 
consider  it  to  be  even  now  implicit  within 
experience  as  its  ideal  signification.  Kant  and 
his  successors  look,  in  short,  in  diametrically 
opposite  directions.  Do  not  be  misled  by 
Kant’s  admission  of  theism  into  his  system. 
His  God  is  the  ordinary  dualistic  God  of 
Christianity,  to  whom  his  philosophy  simply 
opens  the  door;  he  has  nothing  whatsoever 

240 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

in  common  with  the  ‘ absolute  spirit  ’ set  up  by 
his  successors.  So  far  as  this  absolute  spirit 
is  logically  derived  from  Kant,  it  is  not  from 
his  God,  but  from  entirely  different  elements 
of  his  philosophy.  First  from  his  notion  that 
an  unconditioned  totality  of  the  conditions  of 
any  experience  must  be  assignable ; and  then 
from  his  other  notion  that  the  presence  of  some 
witness,  or  ego  of  apperception,  is  the  most 
universal  of  all  the  conditions  in  question.  The 
post-kantians  make  of  the  witness-condition 
what  is  called  a concrete  universal,  an  indi- 
vidualized all-witness  or  world-self,  which  shall 
imply  in  its  rational  constitution  each  and  all  of 
the  other  conditions  put  together,  and  therefore 
necessitate  each  and  all  of  the  conditioned 
experiences. 

Abridgments  like  this  of  other  men’s  opin- 
ions are  very  unsatisfactory,  they  always  work 
injustice ; but  in  this  case  those  of  you  who  are 
familiar  with  the  literature  will  see  immedi- 
ately what  I have  in  mind ; and  to  the  others, 
if  there  be  any  here,  it  will  suffice  to  say  that 
what  I am  trying  so  pedantically  to  point  out 

241 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


is  only  the  fact  that  monistic  idealists  after 
Kant  have  invariably  sought  relief  from  the 
supposed  contradictions  of  our  world  of  sense 
by  looking  forward  toward  an  ens  rationis  con- 
ceived as  its  integration  or  logical  completion, 
while  he  looked  backward  toward  non-rational 
dinge  an  sich  conceived  as  its  cause.  Plural- 
istic empiricists,  on  the  other  hand,  have  re- 
mained in  the  world  of  sense,  either  naively 
and  because  they  overlooked  the  intellectual- 
istic  contradictions,  or  because,  not  able  to 
ignore  them,  they  thought  they  could  refute 
them  by  a superior  use  of  the  same  intellec- 
tualistic  logic.  Thus  it  is  that  John  Mill  pre- 
tends to  refute  the  Achilles-tortoise  fallacy. 

The  important  point  to  notice  here  is  the 
intellectualist  logic.  Both  sides  treat  it  as 
authoritative,  but  they  do  so  capriciously : the 
absolutists  smashing  the  world  of  sense  by  its 
means,  the  empiricists  smashing  the  absolute 
— for  the  absolute,  they  say,  is  the  quintes- 
sence of  all  logical  contradictions.  Neither  side 
attains  consistency.  The  Hegelians  have  to 
invoke  a higher  logic  to  supersede  the  purely 

242 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

destructive  efforts  of  their  first  logic.  The 
empiricists  use  their  logic  against  the  absolute, 
but  refuse  to  use  it  against  finite  experience. 
Each  party  uses  it  or  drops  it  to  suit  the 
vision  it  has  faith  in,  but  neither  impugns  in 
principle  its  general  theoretic  authority. 

Bergson  alone  challenges  its  theoretic  au- 
thority in  principle.  He  alone  denies  that  mere 
conceptual  logic  can  tell  us  what  is  impossible 
or  possible  in  the  world  of  being  or  fact ; and  he 
does  so  for  reasons  which  at  the  same  time  that 
they  rule  logic  out  from  lordship  over  the  whole 
of  life,  establish  a vast  and  definite  sphere  of 
influence  where  its  sovereignty  is  indisputable. 
Bergson’s  own  text,  felicitous  as  it  is,  is  too 
intricate  for  quotation,  so  I must  use  my  own 
inferior  words  in  explaining  what  I mean  by 
saying  this. 

In  the  first  place,  logic,  giving  primarily  the 
relations  between  concepts  as  such,  and  the 
relations  between  natural  facts  only  second- 
arily or  so  far  as  the  facts  have  been  already 
identified  with  concepts  and  defined  by  them, 
must  of  course  stand  or  fall  with  the  conceptual 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

method.  But  the  conceptual  method  is  a trans- 
formation which  the  flux  of  life  undergoes  at 
our  hands  in  the  interests  of  practice  essen- 
tially and  only  subordinately  in  the  interests 
of  theory.  We  live  forward,  we  understand 
backward,  said  a danish  writer ; and  to  under- 
stand life  by  concepts  is  to  arrest  its  movement, 
cutting  it  up  into  bits  as  if  with  scissors,  and 
immobilizing  these  in  our  logical  herbarium 
where,  comparing  them  as  dried  specimens, 
we  can  ascertain  which  of  them  statically  in- 
cludes or  excludes  which  other.  This  treatment 
supposes  life  to  have  already  accomplished 
itself,  for  the  concepts,  being  so  many  views 
taken  after  the  fact,  are  retrospective  and  post 
mortem.  Nevertheless  we  can  draw  conclu- 
sions from  them  and  project  them  into  the 
future.  We  cannot  learn  from  them  how  life 
made  itself  go,  or  how  it  will  make  itself  go; 
but,  on  the  supposition  that  its  ways  of  mak- 
ing itself  go  are  unchanging,  we  can  calculate 
what  positions  of  imagined  arrest  it  will  exhibit 
hereafter  under  given  conditions.  We  can  com- 
pute, for  instance,  at  what  point  Achilles  will 

244 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

be,  and  where  the  tortoise  will  be,  at  the  end 
of  the  twentieth  minute.  Achilles  may  then  be 
at  a point  far  ahead ; but  the  full  detail  of  how 
he  will  have  managed  practically  to  get  there 
our  logic  never  gives  us  — we  have  seen,  in- 
deed, that  it  finds  that  its  results  contradict 
the  facts  of  nature.  The  computations  which 
the  other  sciences  make  differ  in  no  respect 
from  those  of  mathematics.  The  concepts 
used  are  all  of  them  dots  through  which, 
by  interpolation  or  extrapolation,  curves  are 
drawn,  while  along  the  curves  other  dots  are 
found  as  consequences.  The  latest  refinements 
of  logic  dispense  with  the  curves  altogether, 
and  deal  solely  with  the  dots  and  their  cor- 
respondences each  to  each  in  various  series. 
The  authors  of  these  recent  improvements  tell 
us  expressly  that  their  aim  is  to  abolish  the 
last  vestiges  of  intuition,  videlicet  of  concrete 
reality,  from  the  field  of  reasoning,  which 
then  will  operate  literally  on  mental  dots  or 
bare  abstract  units  of  discourse,  and  on  the 
ways  in  which  they  may  be  strung  in  naked 
series. 


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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

This  is  all  very  esoteric,  and  my  own  under- 
standing of  it  is  most  likely  misunderstanding. 
So  I speak  here  only  by  way  of  brief  reminder 
to  those  who  know.  For  the  rest  of  us  it  is 
enough  to  recognize  this  fact,  that  altho  by 
means  of  concepts  cut  out  from  the  sensible 
flux  of  the  past,  we  can  re-descend  upon  the 
future  flux  and,  making  another  cut,  say  what 
particular  thing  is  likely  to  be  found  there ; and 
that  altho  in  this  sense  concepts  give  us  know- 
ledge, and  may  be  said  to  have  some  theoretic 
value  (especially  w7hen  the  particular  thing 
foretold  is  one  in  which  we  take  no  present 
practical  interest) ; yet  in  the  deeper  sense  of 
giving  insight  they  have  no  theoretic  value,  for 
they  quite  fail  to  connect  us  writh  the  inner  life 
of  the  flux,  or  with  the  causes  that  govern  its 
direction.  Instead  of  being  interpreters  of 
reality,  concepts  negate  the  inwardness  of  re- 
ality altogether.  They  make  the  whole  notion 
of  a causal  influence  between  finite  things  in- 
comprehensible. No  real  activities  and  indeed 
no  real  connexions  of  any  kind  can  obtain  if  we 
follow  the  conceptual  logic;  for  to  be  distin- 

246 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 


guishable,  according  to  what  I call  intellec- 
tualism,  is  to  be  incapable  of  connexion.  The 
work  begun  by  Zeno,  and  continued  by  Hume, 
Kant,  Herbart,  Hegel,  and  Bradley,  does  not 
stop  till  sensible  reality  lies  entirely  disinte- 
grated at  the  feet  of  ‘reason.’ 

Of  the  ‘absolute’  reality  which  reason  pro- 
poses to  substitute  for  sensible  reality  I shall 
have  more  to  say  presently.  Meanwhile  you 
see  what  Professor  Bergson  means  by  insisting 
that  the  function  of  the  intellect  is  practical 
rather  than  theoretical.  Sensible  reality  is  too 
concrete  to  be  entirely  manageable — look  at 
the  narrow  range  of  it  which  is  all  that  any 
animal,  living  in  it  exclusively  as  he  does,  is 
able  to  compass.  To  get  from  one  point  in  it 
to  another  we  have  to  plough  or  wade  through 
the  whole  intolerable  interval.  No  detail  is 
spared  us ; it  is  as  bad  as  the  barbed-wire  com- 
plications at  Port  Arthur,  and  we  grow  old 
and  die  in  the  process.  But  with  our  faculty  of 
abstracting  and  fixing  concepts  we  are  there  in 
a second,  almost  as  if  we  controlled  a fourth 
dimension,  skipping  the  intermediaries  as  by  a 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

divine  winged  power,  and  getting  at  the  exact 
point  we  require  without  entanglement  with 
any  context.  What  we  do  in  fact  is  to  harness 
up  reality  in  our  conceptual  systems  in  order 
to  drive  it  the  better.  This  process  is  practical 
because  all  the  termini  to  which  we  drive  are 
particular  termini,  even  when  they  are  facts  of 
the  mental  order.  But  the  sciences  in  which 
the  conceptual  method  chiefly  celebrates  its  tri- 
umphs are  those  of  space  and  matter,  where 
the  transformations  of  external  things  are  dealt 
with.  To  deal  with  moral  facts  conceptually,  we 
have  first  to  transform  them,  substitute  brain- 
diagrams  or  physical  metaphors,  treat  ideas  as 
atoms,  interests  as  mechanical  forces,  our  con- 
scious ‘ selves  ’ as  ‘ streams,’  and  the  like.  Para- 
doxical effect ! as  Bergson  well  remarks,  if  our 
intellectual  life  were  not  practical  but  destined 
to  reveal  the  inner  natures.  One  would  then 
suppose  that  it  would  find  itself  most  at  home 
in  the  domain  of  its  own  intellectual  realities. 
But  it  is  precisely  there  that  it  finds  itself  at 
the  end  of  its  tether.  We  know  the  inner 
movements  of  our  spirit  only  perceptually. 

248 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

We  feel  them  live  in  us,  but  can  give  no  dis- 
tinct account  of  their  elements,  nor  definitely 
predict  their  future ; while  things  that  lie  along 
the  world  of  space,  things  of  the  sort  that  we 
literally  handle , are  what  our  intellects  cope 
with  most  successfully.  Does  not  this  con- 
firm us  in  the  view  that  the  original  and  still 
surviving  function  of  our  intellectual  life  is 
to  guide  us  in  the  practical  adaptation  of  our 
expectancies  and  activities  ? 

One  can  easily  get  into  a verbal  mess  at  this 
point,  and  my  own  experience  with  ‘pragma- 
tism’ makes  me  shrink  from  the  dangers  that 
lie  in  the  word  ‘practical,’  and  far  rather  than 
stand  out  against  you  for  that  word,  I am  quite 
willing  to  part  company  with  Professor  Berg- 
son, and  to  ascribe  a primarily  theoretical  func- 
tion to  our  intellect,  provided  you  on  your  part 
then  agree  to  discriminate  ‘ theoretic  ’ or  scien- 
tific knowledge  from  the  deeper  ‘ speculative  ’ 
knowledge  aspired  to  by  most  philosophers, 
and  concede  that  theoretic  knowledge,  which 
is  knowledge  about  things,  as  distinguished 
from  living  or  sympathetic  acquaintance  with 

249 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

them,  touches  only  the  outer  surface  of  real- 
ity.1 The  surface  which  theoretic  knowledge 
taken  in  this  sense  covers  may  indeed  be 
enormous  in  extent;  it  may  dot  the  whole  di- 
ameter of  space  and  time  with  its  conceptual 
creations;  but  it  does  not  penetrate  a milli- 
meter into  the  solid  dimension.  That  inner 
dimension  of  reality  is  occupied  by  the  activi- 
ties that  keep  it  going,  but  the  intellect,  speak- 
ing through  Hume,  Kant  & Co.,  finds  itself 
obliged  to  deny,  and  persists  in  denying,  that 
X activities  have  any  intelligible  existence.  What 
exists  for  thought,  we  are  told,  is  at  most  the 
results  that  we  illusorily  ascribe  to  such  ac- 
tivities, strung  along  the  surfaces  of  space 
and  time  by  regeln  der  verkniipfung,  laws  of 
nature  which  state  only  coexistences  and  suc- 
cessions.1 

Thought  deals  thus  solely  with  surfaces.  It 
can  name  the  thickness  of  reality,  but  it  cannot 
fathom  it,  and  its  insufficiency  here  is  essential 
and  permanent,  not  temporary. 

The  only  way  in  which  to  apprehend  reality’s 
thickness  is  either  to  experience  it  directly  by 

250 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

being  a part  of  reality  one’s  self,  or  to  evoke 
it  in  imagination  by  sympathetically  divining 
some  one  else’s  inner  life.  But  what  we  thus 
immediately  experience  or  concretely  divine  is 
very  limited  in  duration,  whereas  abstractly  we 
are  able  to  conceive  eternities.  Could  we  feel  a 
million  years  concretely  as  we  now  feel  a passing 
minute,  we  should  have  very  little  employment 
for  our  conceptual  faculty.  We  should  know  the 
whole  period  fully  at  every  moment  of  its  pas- 
sage, whereas  we  must  now  construct  it  labori- 
ously by  means  of  concepts  which  we  project. 
Direct  acquaintance  and  conceptual  knowledge 
are  thus  complementary  of  each  other;  each 
remedies  the  other’s  defects.  If  what  we  care 
most  about  be  the  synoptic  treatment  of  phe- 
nomena, the  vision  of  the  far  and  the  gathering 
of  the  scattered  like,  we  must  follow  the  con- 
ceptual method.  But  if,  as  metaphysicians,  we 
are  more  curious  about  the  inner  nature  of 
reality  or  about  what  really  makes  it  go,  we 
must  turn  our  backs  upon  our  winged  concepts 
altogether,  and  bury  ourselves  in  the  thickness 
of  those  passing  moments  over  the  surface  of 

251 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


which  they  fly,  and  on  particular  points  of 
which  they  occasionally  rest  and  perch. 

Professor  Bergson  thus  inverts  the  tradi- 
tional platonic  doctrine  absolutely.  Instead  of 
intellectual  knowledge  being  the  profounder, 
he  calls  it  the  more  superficial.  Instead  of 
being  the  only  adequate  knowledge,  it  is  grossly 
inadequate,  and  its  only  superiority  is  the  prac- 
tical one  of  enabling  us  to  make  short  cuts 
through  experience  and  thereby  to  save  time. 
The  one  thing  it  cannot  do  is  to  reveal  the 
nature  of  things  — which  last  remark,  if  not 
clear  already,  will  become  clearer  as  I proceed. 
Dive  back  into  the  flux  itself,  then,  Bergson 
tells  us,  if  you  wish  to  know  reality,  that  flux 
which  Platonism,  in  its  strange  belief  that  only 
the  immutable  is  excellent,  has  always  spurned ; 
turn  your  face  towrard  sensation,  that  flesh- 
bound  thing  which  rationalism  has  always 
loaded  with  abuse.  — This,  you  see,  is  exactly 
the  opposite  remedy  from  that  of  looking  for- 
ward into  the  absolute,  which  our  idealistic 
contemporaries  prescribe.  It  violates  our  men- 
tal habits,  being  a kind  of  passive  and  recep- 

252 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUAL!  SM 


tive  listening  quite  contrary  to  that  effort  to 
react  noisily  and  verbally  on  everything,  which 
is  our  usual  intellectual  pose. 

What,  then,  are  the  peculiar  features  in  the 
perceptual  flux  which  the  conceptual  transla- 
tion so  fatally  leaves  out  ? 

The  essence  of  life  is  its  continuously  chang- 
ing character;  but  our  concepts  are  all  dis- 
continuous and  fixed,  and  the  only  mode  of 
making  them  coincide  wdth  life  is  by  arbitrarily 
supposing  positions  of  arrest  therein.  With 
such  arrests  our  concepts  may  be  made  con- 
gruent. But  these  concepts  are  not  parts  of 
reality,  not  real  positions  taken  by  it,  but  sup- 
positions rather,  notes  taken  by  ourselves,  and 
you  can  no  more  dip  up  the  substance  of  real- 
ity with  them  than  you  can  dip  up  water  with 
a net,  however  finely  meshed. 

When  we  conceptualize,  we  cut  out  and  fix, 
and  exclude  everything  but  what  we  have  fixed. 
A concept  means  a that-and-no-other . Concep- 
tually, time  excludes  space ; motion  and  rest  ex- 
clude each  other ; approach  excludes  contact ; 
presence  excludes  absence;  unity  excludes 

253 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


plurality ; independence  excludes  relativity ; 
‘ mine  ’ excludes  ‘ yours  ’ ; this  connexion  ex- 
cludes that  connexion — and  so  on  indefinitely; 
whereas  in  the  real  concrete  sensible  flux  of 
life  experiences  compenetrate  each  other  so 
that  it  is  not  easy  to  know  just  what  is  excluded 
and  what  not.  Past  and  future,  for  example, 
conceptually  separated  by  the  cut  to  which  we 
give  the  name  of  present,  and  defined  as  being 
the  opposite  sides  of  that  cut,  are  to  some 
extent,  however  brief,  co-present  with  each 
other  throughout  experience.  The  literally 
present  moment  is  a purely  verbal  supposition, 
not  a position ; the  only  present  ever  realized 
concretely  being  the  ‘ passing  moment  ’ in 
which  the  dying  rearward  of  time  and  its 
dawning  future  forever  mix  their  lights.  Say 
‘ now  ’ and  it  was  even  while  you  say  it. 

It  is  just  intellectualism’s  attempt  to  sub- 
stitute static  cuts  for  units  of  experienced  dura- 
tion that  makes  real  motion  so  unintelligible. 
The  conception  of  the  first  half  of  the  interval 
between  Achilles  and  the  tortoise  excludes  that 
of  the  last  half,  and  the  mathematical  neces- 


254 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 


sity  of  traversing  it  separately  before  the  last 
half  is  traversed  stands  permanently  in  the  way 
of  the  last  half  ever  being  traversed.  Mean- 
while the  living  Achilles  (who,  for  the  purposes 
of  this  discussion,  is  only  the  abstract  name  of 
one  phenomenon  of  impetus,  just  as  the  tor- 
toise is  of  another)  asks  no  leave  of  logic.  The 
velocity  of  his  acts  is  an  indivisible  nature  in 
them  like  the  expansive  tension  in  a spring 
compressed.  We  define  it  conceptually  as 
but  the  s and  t are  only  artificial  cuts  made 
after  the  fact,  and  indeed  most  artificial  when 
we  treat  them  in  both  runners  as  the  same 
tracts  of  ‘objective’  space  and  time,  for  the 
experienced  spaces  and  times  in  which  the 
tortoise  inwardly  lives  are  probably  as  differ- 
ent as  his  velocity  from  the  same  things  in 
Achilles.  The  impetus  of  Achilles  is  one  con- 
crete fact,  and  carries  space,  time,  and  conquest 
over  the  inferior  creature’s  motion  indivisibly 
in  it.  He  perceives  nothing,  while  running,  of 
the  mathematician’s  homogeneous  time  and 
space,  of  the  infinitely  numerous  succession 
of  cuts  in  both,  or  of  their  order.  End  and 


255 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


beginning  come  for  him  in  the  one  onrush, 
and  all  that  he  actually  experiences  is  that,  in 
the  midst  of  a certain  intense  effort  of  his  own, 
the  rival  is  in  point  of  fact  outstripped. 

We  are  so  inveterately  wedded  to  the  con- 
ceptual decomposition  of  life  that  I know  that 
this  will  seem  to  you  like  putting  muddiest  con- 
fusion in  place  of  clearest  thought,  and  relaps- 
ing into  a molluscoid  state  of  mind.  Yet  I ask 
you  whether  the  absolute  superiority  of  our 
higher  thought  is  so  very  clear,  if  all  that  it 
can  find  is  impossibility  in  tasks  which  sense- 
experience  so  easily  performs. 

What  makes  you  call  real  life  confusion  is 
that  it  presents,  as  if  they  were  dissolved  in 
one  another,  a lot  of  differents  which  concep- 
tion breaks  life’s  flow  by  keeping  apart.  But  are 
not  differents  actually  dissolved  in  one  another  ? 
Has  n’t  every  bit  of  experience  its  quality,  its 
duration,  its  extension,  its  intensity,  its  urgency, 
its  clearness,  and  many  aspects  besides,  no  one 
of  which  can  exist  in  the  isolation  in  which 
our  verbalized  logic  keeps  it  ? They  exist  only 
durcheinander.  Reality  always  is,  in  M.  Berg- 

256 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

son’s  phrase,  an  endosmosis  or  conflux  of  the 
same  with  the  different : they  compenetrate 
and  telescope.  For  conceptual  logic,  the  same 
is  nothing  but  the  same,  and  all  sames  with  a 
third  thing  are  the  same  with  each  other.  Not 
so  in  concrete  experience.  Two  spots  on  our 
skin,  each  of  which  feels  the  same  as  a third 
spot  when  touched  along  with  it,  are  felt  as  dif- 
ferent from  each  other.  Two  tones,  neither  dis- 
tinguishable from  a third  tone,  are  perfectly 
distinct  from  each  other.  The  whole  process 
of  life  is  due  to  life’s  violation  of  our  logical 
axioms.  Take  its  continuity  as  an  example. 
Terms  like  A and  C appear  to  be  connected 
by  intermediaries,  by  B for  example.  Intel- 
lectualism  calls  this  absurd,  for  ‘ B-connected- 
with-A’  is,  ‘as  such,’  a different  term  from 
‘B-connected-with-C.’  But  real  life  laughs  at 
logic’s  veto.  Imagine  a heavy  log  which  takes 
two  men  to  carry  it.  First  A and  B take  it. 
Then  C takes  hold  and  A drops  off ; then  D 
takes  hold  and  B drops  off,  so  that  C and  D 
now  bear  it;  and  so  on.  The  log  meanwhile 
never  drops,  and  keeps  its  sameness  through- 

257 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


out  the  journey.  Even  so  it  is  with  all  our 
experiences.  Their  changes  are  not  complete 
annihilations  followed  by  complete  creations  of 
something  absolutely  novel.  There  is  partial 
decay  and  partial  growth,  and  all  the  while  a 
nucleus  of  relative  constancy  from  which  what 
decays  drops  off,  and  which  takes  into  itself 
whatever  is  grafted  on,  until  at  length  some- 
thing wholly  different  has  taken  its  place.  In 
such  a process  we  are  as  sure,  in  spite  of  in- 
tellectualist  logic  with  its  ‘ as  suches,’  that  it  is 
the  same  nucleus  which  is  able  now  to  make 
connexion  with  what  goes  and  again  with  what 
comes,  as  we  are  sure  that  the  same  point  can 
lie  on  diverse  lines  that  intersect  there.  With- 
out being  one  throughout,  such  a universe  is 
continuous.  Its  members  interdigitate  with 
their  next  neighbors  in  manifold  directions, 
and  there  are  no  clean  cuts  between  them 
anywhere. 

The  great  clash  of  intellectualist  logic  with 
sensible  experience  is  where  the  experience  is 
that  of  influence  exerted.  Intellectualism  de- 
nies (as  we  saw  in  lecture  ii)  that  finite  things 

258 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

can  act  on  one  another,  for  all  things,  once 
translated  into  concepts,  remain  shut  up  to 
themselves.  To  act  on  anything  means  to  get 
into  it  somehow;  but  that  would  mean  to  get 
out  of  one’s  self  and  be  one’s  other,  which  is 
self-contradictory,  etc.  Meanwhile  each  of  us 
actually  is  his  own  other  to  that  extent,  livingly 
knowing  how  to  perform  the  trick  which  logic 
tells  us  can’t  be  done.  My  thoughts  animate 
and  actuate  this  very  body  which  you  see  and 
hear,  and  thereby  influence  your  thoughts.  The 
dynamic  current  somehow  does  get  from  me 
to  you,  however  numerous  the  intermediary 
conductors  may  have  to  be.  Distinctions  may 
be  insulators  in  logic  as  much  as  they  like,  but 
in  life  distinct  things  can  and  do  commune 
together  every  moment. 

The  conflict  of  the  two  ways  of  knowing  is 
best  summed  up  in  the  intellectualist  doctrine 
that  ‘the  same  cannot  exist  in  many  relations.’ 
This  follows  of  course  from  the  concepts  of  the 
two  relations  being  so  distinct  that  ‘what-is- 
in-the-one’  means  ‘as  such’  something  dis- 
tinct from  what  ‘ what-is-in-the-other  ’ means. 

259 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


It  is  like  Mill’s  ironical  saying,  that  we  should 
not  think  of  Newton  as  both  an  Englishman 
and  a mathematician,  because  an  Englishman 
as  such  is  not  a mathematician  and  a mathema- 
tician as  such  is  not  an  Englishman.  But  the 
real  Newton  was  somehow  both  things  at  once ; 
and  throughout  the  whole  finite  universe  each 
real  thing  proves  to  be  many  differents  without 
undergoing  the  necessity  of  breaking  into  dis- 
connected editions  of  itself. 

These  few  indications  will  perhaps  suffice  to 
put  you  at  the  bergsonian  point  of  view.  The 
immediate  experience  of  life  solves  the  problems 
which  so  baffle  our  conceptual  intelligence: 
How  can  what  is  manifold  be  one  ? how  can 
things  get  out  of  themselves  ? how  be  their  own 
others  ? how  be  both  distinct  and  connected  ? 
how  can  they  act  on  one  another  ? how  be  for 
others  and  yet  for  themselves  ? how  be  absent 
and  present  at  once  ? The  intellect  asks  these 
questions  much  as  we  might  ask  how  anything 
can  both  separate  and  unite  things,  or  how 
sounds  can  grow  more  alike  by  continuing  to 
grow  more  different.  If  you  already  know  space 

260 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTE LLECTUALISM 

sensibly,  you  can  answer  the  former  question 
by  pointing  to  any  interval  in  it,  long  or  short ; 
if  you  know  the  musical  scale,  you  can  answer 
the  latter  by  sounding  an  octave ; but  then  you 
must  first  have  the  sensible  knowledge  of  these 
realities.  Similarly  Bergson  answers  the  intel- 
lectualist  conundrums  by  pointing  back  to  our 
various  finite  sensational  experiences  and  say- 
ing, ‘Lo,  even  thus;  even  so  are  these  other 
problems  solved  livingly.’ 

When  you  have  broken  the  reality  into  con- 
cepts you  never  can  reconstruct  it  in  its  whole- 
ness. Out  of  no  amount  of  discreteness  can  you 
manufacture  the  concrete.  But  place  yourself 
at  a bound,  or  d'emblee,  as  M.  Bergson  says,  in- 
side of  the  living,  moving,  active  thickness  of 
the  real,  and  all  the  abstractions  and  distinc- 
tions are  given  into  your  hand:  you  can  now 
make  the  intellectualist  substitutions  to  your 
heart’s  content.  Install  yourself  in  phenomenal 
movement,  for  example,  and  velocity,  succes- 
sion, dates,  positions,  and  innumerable  other 
things  are  given  you  in  the  bargain.  But  with 
only  an  abstract  succession  of  dates  and  posi- 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

tions  you  can  never  patch  up  movement  itself. 
It  slips  through  their  intervals  and  is  lost. 

So  it  is  with  every  concrete  thing,  however 
complicated.  Our  intellectual  handling  of  it  is 
a retrospective  patchwork,  a post-mortem  dis- 
section, and  can  follow  any  order  we  find  most 
expedient.  We  can  make  the  thing  seem  self- 
contradictory whenever  we  wish  to.  But  place 
yourself  at  the  point  of  view  of  the  thing’s 
interior  doing,  and  all  these  back-looking  and 
conflicting  conceptions  lie  harmoniously  in 
your  hand.  Get  at  the  expanding  centre  of  a 
human  character,  the  elan  vital  of  a man,  as 
Bergson  calls  it,  by  living  sympathy,  and  at  a 
stroke  you  see  how  it  makes  those  who  see  it 
from  without  interpret  it  in  such  diverse  ways. 
It  is  something  that  breaks  into  both  honesty 
and  dishonesty,  courage  and  cowardice,  stupid- 
ity and  insight,  at  the  touch  of  varying  circum- 
stances, and  you  feel  exactly  why  and  how  it 
does  this,  and  never  seek  to  identify  it  stably 
with  any  of  these  single  abstractions.  Only 
your  intellectualist  does  that,  — and  you  now 
also  feel  why  he  must  do  it  to  the  end. 

262 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 


Place  yourself  similarly  at  the  centre  of  a 
man’s  philosophic  vision  and  you  understand 
at  once  all  the  different  things  it  makes  him 
write  or  say.  But  keep  outside,  use  your  post- 
mortem method,  try  to  build  the  philosophy 
up  out  of  the  single  phrases,  taking  first  one 
and  then  another  and  seeking  to  make  them 
fit,  and  of  course  you  fail.  You  crawl  over  the 
thing  like  a myopic  ant  over  a building,  tum- 
bling into  every  microscopic  crack  or  fissure, 
finding  nothing  but  inconsistencies,  and  never 
suspecting  that  a centre  exists.  I hope  that 
some  of  the  philosophers  in  this  audience  may 
occasionally  have  had  something  different  from 
this  intellectualist  type  of  criticism  applied  to 
their  own  works ! 

What  really  exists  is  not  things  made  but 
things  in  the  making.  Once  made,  they  are 
dead,  and  an  infinite  number  of  alternative  con- 
ceptual decompositions  can  be  used  in  defining 
them.  But  put  yourself  in  the  making  by  a 
stroke  of  intuitive  sympathy  with  the  thing  and, 
the  whole  range  of  possible  decompositions 
coming  at  once  into  your  possession,  you  are 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

no  longer  troubled  with  the  question  which  of 
them  is  the  more  absolutely  true.  Reality  falls 
in  passing  into  conceptual  analysis;  it  mounts 
in  living  its  own  undivided  life — it  buds  and 
bourgeons,  changes  and  creates.  Once  adopt 
the  movement  of  this  life  in  any  given  instance 
and  you  know  what  Bergson  calls  the  devenir 
reel  by  which  the  thing  evolves  and  grows. 
Philosophy  should  seek  this  kind  of  living 
understanding  of  the  movement  of  reality, 
not  follow  science  in  vainly  patching  together 
fragments  of  its  dead  results. 

Thus  much  of  M.  Bergson’s  philosophy  is 
sufficient  for  my  purpose  in  these  lectures,  so 
here  I will  stop,  leaving  unnoticed  all  its  other 
constituent  features,  original  and  interesting 
tho  they  be.  You  may  say,  and  doubtless  some 
of  you  now  are  saying  inwardly,  that  his  re- 
manding us  to  sensation  in  this  wise  is  only  a 
regress,  a return  to  that  ultra-crude  empiricism 
which  your  own  idealists  since  Green  have 
buried  ten  times  over.  I confess  that  it  is  in- 
deed a return  to  empiricism,  but  I think  that 
the  return  in  such  accomplished  shape  only 

264 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 


proves  the  latter’s  immortal  truth.  What  won’t 
stay  buried  must  have  some  genuine  life.  Am 
anfang  war  die  tat;  fact  is  a first ; to  which 
all  our  conceptual  handling  comes  as  an  inade- 
quate second,  never  its  full  equivalent.  When 
I read  recent  transcendentalist  literature  — I 
must  partly  except  my  colleague  Royce ! — I 
get  nothing  but  a sort  of  marking  of  time, 
champing  of  jaws,  pawing  of  the  ground,  and 
resettling  into  the  same  attitude,  like  a weary 
horse  in  a stall  with  an  empty  manger.  It  is  but 
turning  over  the  same  few  threadbare  cate- 
gories, bringing  the  same  objections,  and  urg- 
ing the  same  answers  and  solutions,  with  never 
a new  fact  or  a new  horizon  coming  into  sight. 
But  open  Bergson,  and  newr  horizons  loom  on 
every  page  you  read.  It  is  like  the  breath  of 
the  morning  and  the  song  of  birds.  It  tells  of 
reality  itself,  instead  of  merely  reiterating  what 
dusty-minded  professors  have  written  about 
what  other  previous  professors  have  thought. 
Nothing  in  Bergson  is  shop- worn  or  at  second 
hand. 

That  he  gives  us  no  closed-in  system  will  of 
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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


course  be  fatal  to  him  in  intellectualist  eyes. 
He  only  evokes  and  invites ; but  he  first  annuls 
the  intellectualist  veto,  so  that  we  now  join  step 
with  reality  with  a philosophical  conscience 
never  quite  set  free  before.  As  a french  disci- 
ple of  his  well  expresses  it:  ‘Bergson  claims  of 
us  first  of  all  a certain  inner  catastrophe,  and 
not  every  one  is  capable  of  such  a logical  revo- 
lution. But  those  who  have  once  found  them- 
selves flexible  enough  for  the  execution  of  such 
a psychological  change  of  front,  discover 
somehow  that  they  can  never  return  again  to 
their  ancient  attitude  of  mind.  They  are  now 
Bergsonians  . . . and  possess  the  principal 
thoughts  of  the  master  all  at  once.  They  have 
understood  in  the  fashion  in  which  one  loves, 
they  have  caught  the  whole  melody  and  can 
thereafter  admire  at  their  leisure  the  original- 
ity, the  fecundity,  and  the  imaginative  genius 
with  which  its  author  develops,  transposes, 
and  varies  in  a thousand  ways  by  the  orches- 
tration of  his  style  and  dialectic,  the  original 
theme.’2 

This,  scant  as  it  is,  is  all  I have  to  say  about 
266 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

Bergson  on  this  occasion  — I hope  it  may  send 
some  of  you  to  his  original  text.  I must  now 
turn  back  to  the  point  where  I found  it  advis- 
able to  appeal  to  his  ideas.  You  remember  my 
own  intellectualist  difficulties  in  the  last  lecture, 
about  how  a lot  of  separate  consciousnesses  can 
at  the  same  time  be  one  collective  thing.  How, 
I asked,  can  one  and  the  same  identical  content 
of  experience,  of  which  on  idealist  principles 
the  esse  is  to  be  felt,  be  felt  so  diversely  if  itself 
be  the  only  feeler  ? The  usual  way  of  escape 
by  ‘quatenus’  or  ‘as  such’  won’t  help  us  here 
if  we  are  radical  intellectualists,  I said,  for  ap- 
pearance-together is  as  such  not  appearance- 
apart,  the  world  qua  many  is  not  the  world 
qua  one,  as  absolutism  claims.  If  we  hold  to 
Hume’s  maxim,  which  later  intellectualism 
uses  so  well,  that  whatever  things  are  distin- 
guished are  as  separate  as  if  there  were  no 
manner  of  connexion  between  them,  there 
seemed  no  way  out  of  the  difficulty  save  by 
stepping  outside  of  experience  altogether  and 
invoking  different  spiritual  agents,  selves  or 
souls,  to  realize  the  diversity  required.  But 

267 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


this  rescue  by  ‘ scholastic  entities  ’ I was  unwill- 
ing to  accept  any  more  than  pantheistic  ideal- 
ists accept  it. 

Yet,  to  quote  Fechner’s  phrase  again,  ‘nichts 
wirkliches  kann  unmoglich  sein,’  the  actual 
cannot  be  impossible,  and  what  is  actual  at 
every  moment  of  our  lives  is  the  sort  of  thing 
which  I now  proceed  to  remind  you  of.  You 
can  hear  the  vibration  of  an  electric  contact- 
maker,  smell  the  ozone,  see  the  sparks,  and  feel 
the  thrill,  co-consciously  as  it  were  or  in  one 
field  of  experience.  But  you  can  also  isolate 
any  one  of  these  sensations  by  shutting  out  the 
rest.  If  you  close  your  eyes,  hold  your  nose, 
and  remove  your  hand,  you  can  get  the  sensa- 
tion of  sound  alone,  but  it  seems  still  the  same 
sensation  that  it  was ; and  if  you  restore  the 
action  of  the  other  organs,  the  sound  coalesces 
with  the  feeling,  the  sight,  and  the  smell  sen- 
sations again.  Now  the  natural  way  of  talk- 
ing of  all  this3  is  to  say  that  certain  sensations 
are  experienced,  now  singly,  and  now  together 
with  other  sensations,  in  a common  conscious 
field.  Fluctuations  of  attention  give  analogous 

268 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

results.  We  let  a sensation  in  or  keep  it 
out  by  changing  our  attention ; and  similarly 
we  let  an  item  of  memory  in  or  drop  it  out. 
[Please  don’t  raise  the  question  here  of  how 
these  changes  come  to  pass.  The  immediate 
condition  is  probably  cerebral  in  every  in- 
stance, but  it  would  be  irrelevant  now  to  con- 
sider it,  for  now  we  are  thinking  only  of  results, 
and  I repeat  that  the  natural  way  of  thinking 
of  them  is  that  which  intellectualist  criticism 
finds  so  absurd.] 

The  absurdity  charged  is  that  the  self-same 
should  function  so  differently,  now  with  and 
now  without  something  else.  But  this  it 
sensibly  seems  to  do.  This  very  desk  which 
I strike  with  my  hand  strikes  in  turn  your 
eyes.  It  functions  at  once  as  a physical  object 
in  the  outer  world  and  as  a mental  object  in 
our  sundry  mental  worlds.  The  very  body  of 
mine  that  my  thought  actuates  is  the  body 
whose  gestures  are  your  visual  object  and  to 
which  you  give  my  name.  The  very  log  which 
John  helped  to  carry  is  the  log  now  borne  by 
James.  The  very  girl  you  love  is  simultane- 

269 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

ously  entangled  elsewhere.  The  very  place  be- 
hind me  is  in  front  of  you.  Look  where  you 
will,  you  gather  only  examples  of  the  same  amid 
the  different,  and  of  different  relations  existing 
as  it  were  in  solution  in  the  same  thing.  Qua 
this  an  experience  is  not  the  same  as  it  is  qua 
that,  truly  enough ; but  the  quds  are  conceptual 
shots  of  ours  at  its  post-mortem  remains,  and 
in  its  sensational  immediacy  everything  is  all 
at  once  whatever  different  things  it  is  at  once 
at  all.  It  is  before  C and  after  A,  far  from 
you  and  near  to  me,  without  this  associate  and 
with  that  one,  active  and  passive,  physical  and 
mental,  a whole  of  parts  and  part  of  a higher 
whole,  all  simultaneously  and  without  inter- 
ference or  need  of  doubling-up  its  being,  so 
long  as  we  keep  to  what  I call  the  ‘ immediate  ’ 
point  of  view,  the  point  of  view  in  which  we 
follow  our  sensational  life’s  continuity,  and  to 
which  all  living  language  conforms.  It  is  only 
when  you  try  — to  continue  using  the  hegelian 
vocabulary — to  ‘mediate’  the  immediate,  or 
to  substitute  concepts  for  sensational  life,  that 
intellcctualism  celebrates  its  triumph  and  the 

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VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

immanent -self -contradictoriness  of  all  this 
smooth-running  finite  experience  gets  proved. 

Of  the  oddity  of  inventing  as  a remedy  for 
the  inconveniences  resulting  from  this  situa- 
tion a supernumerary  conceptual  object  called 
an  absolute,  into  which  you  pack  the  self-same 
contradictions  unreduced,  I will  say  something 
in  the  next  lecture.  The  absolute  is  said  to  per- 
form its  feats  by  taking  up  its  other  into  itself. 
But  that  is  exactly  what  is  done  when  every 
individual  morsel  of  the  sensational  stream 
takes  up  the  adjacent  morsels  by  coalescing 
with  them.  This  is  just  what  we  mean  by  the 
stream’s  sensible  continuity.  No  element  there 
cuts  itself  off  from  any  other  element,  as  con- 
cepts cut  themselves  from  concepts.  No  part 
there  is  so  small  as  not  to  be  a place  of  conflux. 
No  part  there  is  not  really  next  its  neighbors ; 
which  means  that  there  is  literally  nothing 
between ; which  means  again  that  no  part  goes 
exactly  so  far  and  no  farther ; that  no  part  ab- 
solutely excludes  another,  but  that  they  com- 
penetrate  and  are  cohesive ; that  if  you  tear  out 
one,  its  roots  bring  out  more  with  them ; that 

271 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


whatever  is  real  is  telescoped  and  diffused  into 
other  reals ; that,  in  short,  every  minutest  thing 
is  already  its  hegelian  ‘own  other,’  in  the  fullest 
sense  of  the  term. 

Of  course  this  sounds  self-contradictory,  but 
as  the  immediate  facts  don’t  sound  at  all,  but 
simply  are,  until  we  conceptualize  and  name 
them  vocally,  the  contradiction  results  only  from 
the  conceptual  or  discursive  form  being  sub- 
stituted for  the  real  form.  But  if,  as  Bergson 
shows,  that  form  is  superimposed  for  practical 
ends  only,  in  order  to  let  us  jump  about  over  life 
instead  of  wading  through  it ; and  if  it  cannot 
even  pretend  to  reveal  anything  of  what  life’s 
inner  nature  is  or  ought  to  be ; why  then  we 
can  turn  a deaf  ear  to  its  accusations.  The 
resolve  to  turn  the  deaf  ear  is  the  inner  crisis 
or  ‘ catastrophe  ’ of  which  M.  Bergson’s  disciple 
whom  I lately  quoted  spoke.  We  are  so  subject 
to  the  philosophic  tradition  which  treats  logos 
or  discursive  thought  generally  as  the  sole  ave- 
nue to  truth,  that  to  fall  back  on  raw  unver- 
balized life  as  more  of  a revealer,  and  to  think 
of  concepts  as  the  merely  practical  things  which 

272 


VI.  BERGSON  AND  INTELLECTUALISM 

Bergson  calls  them,  comes  very  hard.  It  is  put- 
ting off  our  proud  maturity  of  mind  and  becom- 
ing again  as  foolish  little  children  in  the  eyes  of 
reason.  But  difficult  as  such  a revolution  is, 
there  is  no  other  way,  I believe,  to  the  posses- 
sion of  reality,  and  I permit  myself  to  hope  that 
some  of  you  may  share  my  opinion  after  you 
have  heard  my  next  lecture. 


VII 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 


LECTURE  VII 


THE  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 

I fear  that  few  of  you  will  have  been  able  to 
obey  Bergson’s  call  upon  you  to  look  towards 
the  sensational  life  for  the  fuller  knowledge  of 
reality,  or  to  sympathize  with  his  attempt  to 
limit  the  divine  right  of  concepts  to  rule  our 
mind  absolutely.  It  is  too  much  like  looking 
downward  and  not  up.  Philosophy,  you  will 
say,  does  n’t  lie  flat  on  its  belly  in  the  middle 
of  experience,  in  the  very  thick  of  its  sand  and 
gravel,  as  this  Bergsonism  does,  never  getting 
a peep  at  anything  from  above.  Philosophy 
is  essentially  the  vision  of  things  from  above. 
It  does  n’t  simply  feel  the  detail  of  things,  it 
comprehends  their  intelligible  plan,  sees  their 
forms  and  principles,  their  categories  and 
rules,  their  order  and  necessity.  It  takes  the 
superior  point  of  view  of  the  architect.  Is  it 
conceivable  that  it  should  ever  forsake  that 
point  of  view  and  abandon  itself  to  a slovenly 
life  of  immediate  feeling  ? To  say  nothing  of 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

your  traditional  Oxford  devotion  to  Aristotle 
and  Plato,  the  leaven  of  T.  H.  Green  prob- 
ably works  still  too  strongly  here  for  his  anti- 
sensationalism to  be  outgrown  quickly.  Green 
more  than  any  one  realized  that  knowledge 
about  things  was  knowledge  of  their  relations ; 
but  nothing  could  persuade  him  that  our  sen- 
sational life  could  contain  any  relational  ele- 
ment. He  followed  the  strict  intellectualist 
method  with  sensations.  What  they  were  not 
expressly  defined  as  including,  they  must  ex- 
clude. Sensations  are  not  defined  as  relations, 
so  in  the  end  Green  thought  that  they  could  get 
related  together  only  by  the  action  on  them  from 
above  of  a ‘self-distinguishing’  absolute  and 
eternal  mind,  present  to  that  which  is  related, 
but  not  related  itself.  ‘A  relation,’  he  said,  ‘is 
not  contingent  with  the  contingency  of  feeling. 
It  is  permanent  with  the  permanence  of  the 
combining  and  comparing  thought  which  alone 
constitutes  it.’1  In  other  words,  relations  are 
purely  conceptual  objects,  and  the  sensational 
life  as  such  cannot  relate  itself  together.  Sensa- 
tion in  itself,  Green  wrote,  is  fleeting,  momen- 

278 


VII.  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 


tary,  unnameable  (because,  while  we  name  it, 
it  has  become  another),  and  for  the  same  rea- 
son unknowable,  the  very  negation  of  know- 
ability.  Were  there  no  permanent  objects  of 
conception  for  our  sensations  to  be  ‘referred 
to,’  there  would  be  no  significant  names,  but 
only  noises,  and  a consistent  sensationalism 
must  be  speechless.2  Green’s  intellectualism 
was  so  earnest  that  it  produced  a natural  and 
an  inevitable  effect.  But  the  atomistic  and 
unrelated  sensations  which  he  had  in  mind 
were  purely  fictitious  products  of  his  rationalist 
fancy.  The  psychology  of  our  own  day  dis- 
avows them  utterly,3  and  Green’s  laborious 
belaboring  of  poor  old  Locke  for  not  having 
first  seen  that  his  ideas  of  sensation  were  just 
that  impracticable  sort  of  thing,  and  then  fled 
to  transcendental  idealism  as  a remedy,  — his 
belaboring  of  poor  old  Locke  for  this,  I say,  is 
pathetic.  Every  examiner  of  the  sensible  life 
in  concreto  must  see  that  relations  of  every  sort, 
of  time,  space,  difference,  likeness,  change, 
rate,  cause,  or  what  not,  are  just  as  integral 
members  of  the  sensational  flux  as  terms  are, 


279 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


and  that  conjunctive  relations  are  just  as  true 
members  of  the  flux  as  disjunctive  relations 
are.4  This  is  what  in  some  recent  writings  of 
mine  I have  called  the  ‘radically  empiricist’ 
doctrine  (in  distinction  from  the  doctrine  of 
mental  atoms  which  the  name  empiricism 
so  often  suggests).  Intellectualistic  critics 
of  sensation  insist  that  sensations  are  dis- 
joined only.  Radical  empiricism  insists  that 
conjunctions  between  them  are  just  as  imme- 
diately given  as  disjunctions  are,  and  that 
relations,  whether  disjunctive  or  conjunctive, 
are  in  their  original  sensible  givenness  just  as 
fleeting  and  momentary  (in  Green’s  words), 
and  just  as  ‘particular,’  as  terms  are.  Later, 
both  terms  and  relations  get  universalized  by 
being  conceptualized  and  named.5  But  all  the 
thickness,  concreteness,  and  individuality  of 
experience  exists  in  the  immediate  and  rela- 
tively unnamed  stages  of  it,  to  the  richness  of 
which,  and  to  the  standing  inadequacy  of  our 
conceptions  to  match  it,  Professor  Bergson  so 
emphatically  calls  our  attention. 

And  now  I am  happy  to  say  that  we  can  begin 
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VII.  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 


to  gather  together  some  of  the  separate  threads 
of  our  argument,  and  see  a little  better  the  gen- 
eral kind  of  conclusion  toward  which  we  are 
tending.  Pray  go  back  with  me  to  the  lecture 
before  the  last,  and  recall  what  I said  about 
the  difficulty  of  seeing  how  states  of  conscious- 
ness can  compound  themselves.  The  difficulty 
seemed  to  be  the  same,  you  remember,  whether 
we  took  it  in  psychology  as  the  composition  of 
finite  states  of  mind  out  of  simpler  finite  states, 
or  in  metaphysics  as  the  composition  of  the 
absolute  mind  out  of  finite  minds  in  general. 
It  is  the  general  conceptualist  difficulty  of  any 
one  thing  being  the  same  with  many  things, 
either  at  once  or  in  succession,  for  the  abstract 
concepts  of  oneness  and  manyness  must  needs 
exclude  each  other.  In  the  particular  instance 
that  we  have  dwelt  on  so  long,  the  one  thing 
is  the  all-form  of  experience,  the  many  things 
are  the  each-forms  of  experience  in  you  and 
me.  To  call  them  the  same  we  must  treat  them 
as  if  each  were  simultaneously  its  own  other,  a 
feat  on  conceptualist  principles  impossible  of 
performance. 


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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

On  the  principle  of  going  behind  the  con- 
ceptual function  altogether,  however,  and  look- 
ing to  the  more  primitive  flux  of  the  sensa- 
tional life  for  reality’s  true  shape,  a way  is  open 
to  us,  as  I tried  in  my  last  lecture  to  show. 
Not  only  the  absolute  is  its  own  other,  but  the 
simplest  bits  of  immediate  experience  are  their 
own  others,  if  that  hegelian  phrase  be  once 
for  all  allowed.  The  concrete  pulses  of  expe- 
rience appear  pent  in  by  no  such  definite  limits 
as  our  conceptual  substitutes  for  them  are  con- 
fined by.  They  run  into  one  another  continu- 
ously and  seem  to  interpenetrate.  What  in 
them  is  relation  and  what  is  matter  related  is 
hard  to  discern.  You  feel  no  one  of  them  as 
inwardly  simple,  and  no  two  as  wholly  with- 
out confluence  where  they  touch . There  is  no 
datum  so  small  as  not  to  show  this  mystery,  if 
mystery  it  be.  The  tiniest  feeling  that  we  can 
possibly  have  comes  with  an  earlier  and  a later 
part  and  with  a sense  of  their  continuous  pro- 
cession. Mr.  Shadworth  Hodgson  showed  long 
ago  that  there  is  literally  no  such  object  as 
the  present  moment  except  as  an  unreal  postu- 

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VII.  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 


late  of  abstract  thought.0  The  ‘passing’  mo- 
ment is,  as  I already  have  reminded  you,  the 
minimal  fact,  with  the  ‘apparition  of  differ- 
ence ’ inside  of  it  as  well  as  outside.  If  we  do 
not  feel  both  past  and  present  in  one  field 
of  feeling,  wTe  feel  them  not  at  all.  We  have 
the  same  many-in-one  in  the  matter  that  fills 
the  passing  time.  The  rush  of  our  thought 
forward  through  its  fringes  is  the  everlasting 
peculiarity  of  its  life.  We  realize  this  life  as 
something  always  off  its  balance,  something  in 
transition,  something  that  shoots  out  of  a dark- 
ness through  a dawn  into  a brightness  that  we 
feel  to  be  the  dawn  fulfilled.  In  the  very  midst 
of  the  continuity  dur  experience  comes  as  an 
alteration.  ‘ Yes,’  we  say  at  the  full  brightness, 
‘this  is  what  I just  meant.’  ‘No,’  we  feel  at 
the  dawning,  ‘ this  is  not  yet  the  full  meaning, 
there  is  more  to  come.’  In  every  crescendo  of 
sensation,  in  every  effort  to  recall,  in  every 
progress  towards  the  satisfaction  of  desire, 
this  succession  of  an  emptiness  and  fulness 
that  have  reference  to  each  other  and  are  one 
flesh  is  the  essence  of  the  phenomenon.  In 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


every  hindrance  of  desire  the  sense  of  an  ideal 
presence  which  is  absent  in  fact,  of  an  absent, 
in  a word,  which  the  only  function  of  the  pre- 
sent is  to  mean,  is  even  more  notoriously  there. 
And  in  the  movement  of  pure  thought  we  have 
the  same  phenomenon.  When  I say  Socrates 
is  mortal,  the  moment  Socrates  is  incomplete; 
it  falls  forward  through  the  is  which  is  pure 
movement,  into  the  mortal  which  is  indeed  bare 
mortal  on  the  tongue,  but  for  the  mind  is  that 
mortal,  the  mortal  Socrates,  at  last  satisfactorily 
disposed  of  and  told  off.7 

Here,  then,  inside  of  the  minimal  pulses  of 
experience,  is  realized  that  very  inner  com- 
plexity which  the  transcendentalists  say  only 
the  absolute  can  genuinely  possess.  The  gist 
of  the  matter  is  always  the  same  — something 
ever  goes  indissolubly  with  something  else. 
You  cannot  separate  the  same  from  its  other, 
except  by  abandoning  the  real  altogether  and 
taking  to  the  conceptual  system.  What  is  im- 
mediately given  in  the  single  and  particular 
instance  is  always  something  pooled  and  mu- 
tual, something  with  no  dark  spot,  no  point 

284 


VII.  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 


of  ignorance.  No  one  elementary  bit  of  reality 
is  eclipsed  from  the  next  bit’s  point  of  view, 
if  only  we  take  reality  sensibly  and  in  small 
enough  pulses — and  by  us  it  has  to  be  taken 
pulse-wise,  for  our  span  of  consciousness  is  too 
short  to  grasp  the  larger  collectivity  of  things 
except  nominally  and  abstractly.  No  more  of 
reality  collected  together  at  once  is  extant  any- 
where, perhaps,  than  in  my  experience  of  read- 
ing this  page,  or  in  yours  of  listening;  yet 
within  those  bits  of  experience  as  they  come 
to  pass  we  get  a fulness  of  content  that  no 
conceptual  description  can  equal.  Sensational 
experiences  are  their  ‘own  others,’  then,  both 
internally  and  externally.  Inwardly  they  are 
one  with  their  parts,  and  outwardly  they  pass 
continuously  into  their  next  neighbors,  so  that 
events  separated  by  years  of  time  in  a man’s 
life  hang  together  unbrokenly  by  the  inter- 
mediary events.  Their  names,  to  be  sure,  cut 
them  into  separate  conceptual  entities,  but  no 
cuts  existed  in  the  continuum  in  which  they 
originally  came. 

If,  with  all  this  in  our  mind,  we  turn  to  our 


285 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

own  particular  predicament,  we  see  that  our 
old  objection  to  the  self-compounding  of  states 
of  consciousness,  our  accusation  that  it  was 
impossible  for  purely  logical  reasons,  is  un- 
founded in  principle.  Every  smallest  state  of 
consciousness,  concretely  taken,  overflows  its 
own  definition.  Only  concepts  are  self-identi- 
cal ; only  ‘ reason  ’ deals  with  closed  equations ; 
nature  is  but  a name  for  excess ; every  point 
in  her  opens  out  and  runs  into  the  more ; and 
the  only  question,  with  reference  to  any  point 
we  may  be  considering,  is  how  far  into  the 
rest  of  nature  we  may  have  to  go  in  order  to 
get  entirely  beyond  its  overflow.  In  the  pulse 
of  inner  life  immediately  present  now  in  each 
of  us  is  a little  past,  a little  future,  a little 
awareness  of  our  own  body,  of  each  other’s 
persons,  of  these  sublimities  we  are  trying  to 
talk  about,  of  the  earth’s  geography  and  the 
direction  of  history,  of  truth  and  error,  of  good 
and  bad,  and  of  who  knows  how  much  more  ? 
Feeling,  however  dimly  and  subconsciously, 
all  these  things,  your  pulse  of  inner  life  is  con- 
tinuous with  them,  belongs  to  them  and  they 

286 


VII.  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 

to  it.  You  can’t  identify  it  with  either  one  of 
them  rather  than  with  the  others,  for  if  you 
let  it  develop  into  no  matter  which  of  those 
directions,  what  it  develops  into  will  look  back 
on  it  and  say,  ‘That  was  the  original  germ  of 
me.’ 

In  principle,  then,  the  real  units  of  our  imme- 
diately-felt life  are  unlike  the  units  that  intel- 
lectualist  logic  holds  to  and  makes  its  calcula- 
tions with.  They  are  not  separate  from  their 
own  others,  and  you  have  to  take  them  at 
widely  separated  dates  to  find  any  two  of  them 
that  seem  unblent.  Then  indeed  they  do  ap- 
pear separate  even  as  their  concepts  are  sep- 
arate ; a chasm  yawns  between  them ; but  the 
chasm  itself  is  but  an  intellectualist  fiction, 
got  by  abstracting  from  the  continuous  sheet 
of  experiences  with  which  the  intermediary 
time  was  filled.  It  is  like  the  log  carried  first 
by  William  and  Henry,  then  by  William, 
Henry,  and  John,  then  by  Henry  and  John, 
then  by  John  and  Peter,  and  so  on.  All  real 
units  of  experience  overlap.  Let  a row  of  equi- 
distant dots  on  a sheet  of  paper  symbolize  the 

287 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


concepts  by  which  we  intellectual ize  the  world. 
Let  a ruler  long  enough  to  cover  at  least  three 
dots  stand  for  our  sensible  experience.  Then 
the  conceived  changes  of  the  sensible  expe- 
rience can  be  symbolized  by  sliding  the  ruler 
along  the  line  of  dots.  One  concept  after  an- 
other will  apply  to  it,  one  after  another  drop 
away,  but  it  will  always  cover  at  least  two  of 
them,  and  no  dots  less  than  three  will  ever 
adequately  cover  it.  You  falsify  it  if  you  treat 
it  conceptually,  or  by  the  law  of  dots. 

What  is  true  here  of  successive  states  must 
also  be  true  of  simultaneous  characters.  They 
also  overlap  each  other  with  their  being.  My 
present  field  of  consciousness  is  a centre  sur- 
rounded by  a fringe  that  shades  insensibly  into 
a subconscious  more.  I use  three  separate 
terms  here  to  describe  this  fact ; but  I might  as 
well  use  three  hundred,  for  the  fact  is  all  shades 
and  no  boundaries.  Which  part  of  it  properly 
is  in  my  consciousness,  which  out  ? If  I name 
what  is  out,  it  already  has  come  in.  The  centre 
works  in  one  way  while  the  margins  work  in 
another,  and  presently  overpower  the  centre 

288 


VII.  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 

and  are  central  themselves.  What  we  con- 
ceptually identify  ourselves  with  and  say  we 
are  thinking  of  at  any  time  is  the  centre ; but 
our  full  self  is  the  whole  field,  with  all  those 
indefinitely  radiating  subconscious  possibilities 
of  increase  that  we  can  only  feel  without  con- 
ceiving, and  can  hardly  begin  to  analyze.  The 
collective  and  the  distributive  ways  of  being 
coexist  here,  for  each  part  functions  distinctly, 
makes  connexion  with  its  own  peculiar  region 
in  the  still  wider  rest  of  experience  and  tends 
to  draw  us  into  that  line,  and  yet  the  whole  is 
somehow  felt  as  one  pulse  of  our  life,  — not 
conceived  so,  but  felt  so. 

In  principle,  then,  as  I said,  intellectual- 
ism’s  edge  is  broken ; it  can  only  approximate 
to  reality,  and  its  logic  is  inapplicable  to  our 
inner  life,  which  spurns  its  vetoes  and  mocks 
at  its  impossibilities.  Every  bit  of  us  at  every 
moment  is  part  and  parcel  of  a wider  self,  it 
quivers  along  various  radii  like  the  wind-rose 
on  a compass,  and  the  actual  in  it  is  continu- 
ously one  with  possibles  not  yet  in  our  present 
sight.8  And  just  as  we  are  co-conscious  with 

289 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


our  own  momentary  margin,  may  not  we  our- 
selves form  the  margin  of  some  more  really 
central  self  in  things  which  is  co-conscious 
with  the  wrhole  of  us  ? May  not  you  and  I be 
confluent  in  a higher  consciousness,  and  con- 
fluently  active  there,  tho  we  now  know  it  not  ? 

I am  tiring  myself  and  you,  I know,  by 
vainly  seeking  to  describe  by  concepts  and 
words  what  I say  at  the  same  time  exceeds 
either  conceptualization  or  verbalization.  As 
long  as  one  continues  talking,  intellectualism 
remains  in  undisturbed  possession  of  the  field. 
The  return  to  life  can’t  come  about  by  talking. 
It  is  an  act;  to  make  you  return  to  life,  I must 
set  an  example  for  your  imitation,  I must 
deafen  you  to  talk,  or  to  the  importance  of 
talk,  by  showing  you,  as  Bergson  does,  that  the 
concepts  we  talk  with  are  made  for  purposes  of 
\ practice  and  not  for  purposes  of  insight.  Or  I 
must  point,  point  to  the  mere  that  of  life,  and 
you  by  inner  sympathy  must  fill  out  the  what 
for  yourselves.  The  minds  of  some  of  you,  I 
know,  will  absolutely  refuse  to  do  so,  refuse  to 
think  in  non-conceptualized  terms.  I myself 

290 


VII.  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 


absolutely  refused  to  do  so  for  years  together, 
even  after  I knew  that  the  denial  of  manyness- 
in-oneness  by  intellectualism  must  be  false, 
for  the  same  reality  does  perform  the  most  va- 
rious functions  at  once.  But  I hoped  ever  for 
a revised  intellectualist  way  round  the  difficulty, 
and  it  was  only  after  reading  Bergson  that  I 
saw  that  to  continue  using  the  intellectualist 
method  was  itself  the  fault.  I saw  that  phi- 
losophy had  been  on  a false  scent  ever  since 
the  days  of  Socrates  and  Plato,  that  an  intel- 
lectual answer  to  the  intellectualist’s  difficul- 
ties will  never  come,  and  that  the  real  way  out 
of  them,  far  from  consisting  in  the  discovery 
of  such  an  answer,  consists  in  simply  closing 
one’s  ears  to  the  question.  When  conceptual- 
ism summons  life  to  justify  itself  in  conceptual 
terms,  it  is  like  a challenge  addressed  in  a 
foreign  language  to  some  one  who  is  absorbed 
in  his  own  business  ; it  is  irrelevant  to  him  alto- 
gether — he  may  let  it  lie  unnoticed.  I went 
thus  through  the  ‘ inner  catastrophe  ’ of  which 
I spoke  in  the  last  lecture ; I had  literally  come 
to  the  end  of  my  conceptual  stock-in-trade,  I 

291 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


was  bankrupt  intellectualistically,  and  had  to 
change  my  base.  No  words  of  mine  will  prob- 
ably convert  you,  for  words  can  be  the  names 
only  of  concepts.  But  if  any  of  you  try  sin- 
cerely and  pertinaciously  on  your  own  separate 
accounts  to  intellectualize  reality,  you  may  be 
similarly  driven  to  a change  of  front.  I say  no 
more:  I must  leave  life  to  teach  the  lesson. 

We  have  now  reached  a point  of  view  from 
which  the  self-compounding  of  mind  in  its 
smaller  and  more  accessible  portions  seems  a 
certain  fact,  and  in  which  the  speculative  as- 
sumption of  a similar  but  wider  compounding 
in  remoter  regions  must  be  reckoned  with  as  a 
legitimate  hypothesis.  The  absolute  is  not  the 
impossible  being  I once  thought  it.  Mental 
facts  do  function  both  singly  and  together,  at 
once,  and  we  finite  minds  may  simultaneously 
be  co-conscious  with  one  another  in  a super- 
human intelligence.  It  is  only  the  extravagant 
claims  of  coercive  necessity  on  the  absolute’s 
part  that  have  to  be  denied  by  a priori  logic. 
As  an  hypothesis  trying  to  make  itself  probable 
on  analogical  and  inductive  grounds,  the  abso- 

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VII.  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 


lute  is  entitled  to  a patient  hearing.  Which 
is  as  much  as  to  say  that  our  serious  business 
from  now  onward  lies  with  Fechner  and  his 
method,  rather  than  with  Hegel,  Royce,  or 
Bradley.  Fechner  treats  the  superhuman  con- 
sciousness he  so  fervently  believes  in  as  an 
hypothesis  only,  which  he  then  recommends  by 
all  the  resources  of  induction  and  persuasion. 

It  is  true  that  Fechner  himself  is  an  abso- 
lutist in  his  books,  not  actively  but  passively,  if 
I may  say  so.  He  talks  not  only  of  the  earth- 
soul  and  of  the  star-souls,  but  of  an  integrated 
soul  of  all  things  in  the  cosmos  without  excep- 
tion, and  this  he  calls  God  just  as  others  call 
it  the  absolute.  Nevertheless  he  thinks  only 
of  the  subordinate  superhuman  souls,  and  con- 
tent with  having;  made  his  obeisance  once  for 
all  to  the  august  total  soul  of  the  cosmos,  he 
leaves  it  in  its  lonely  sublimity  with  no  attempt 
to  define  its  nature.  Like  the  absolute,  it  is 
‘out  of  range,’  and  not  an  object  for  distincter 
vision.  Psychologically,  it  seems  to  me  that 
Fechner ’s  God  is  a lazy  postulate  of  his,  rather 
than  a part  of  his  system  positively  thought 

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A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

out.  As  we  envelop  our  sight  and  hearing,  so 
the  earth-soul  envelops  us,  and  the  star-soul 
the  earth-soul,  until  — what  ? Envelopment 
can’t  go  on  forever ; it  must  have  an  abschluss, 
a total  envelope  must  terminate  the  series,  so 
God  is  the  name  that  Fechner  gives  to  this 
last  all-enveloper.  But  if  nothing  escapes  this 
all-enveloper,  he  is  responsible  for  everything, 
including  evil,  and  all  the  paradoxes  and  diffi- 
culties which  I found  in  the  absolute  at  the 
end  of  our  third  lecture  recur  undiminished. 
Fechner  tries  sincerely  to  grapple  with  the 
problem  of  evil,  but  he  always  solves  it  in 
the  leibnitzian  fashion  by  making  his  God 
non-absolute,  placing  him  under  conditions  of 
‘metaphysical  necessity’  which  even  his  om- 
nipotence cannot  violate.  His  will  has  to  strug- 
gle with  conditions  not  imposed  on  that  will 
by  itself.  He  tolerates  provisionally  what  he 
has  not  created,  and  then  with  endless  patience 
tries  to  overcome  it  and  live  it  down.  He  has, 
in  short,  a history.  Whenever  Fechner  tries 
to  represent  him  clearly,  his  God  becomes  the 
ordinary  God  of  theism,  and  ceases  to  be  the 

294 


VII.  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 

absolutely  totalized  all-enveloper.9  In  this 
shape,  he  represents  the  ideal  element  in 
things  solely,  and  is  our  champion  and  our 
helper  and  we  his  helpers,  against  the  bad 
parts  of  the  universe. 

Fechner  was  in  fact  too  little  of  a metaphy- 
sician to  care  for  perfect  formal  consistency 
in  these  abstract  regions.  He  believed  in  God 
in  the  pluralistic  manner,  but  partly  from  con- 
vention and  partly  from  what  I should  call  in- 
tellectual laziness,  if  laziness  of  any  kind  could 
be  imputed  to  a Fechner,  he  let  the  usual 
monistic  talk  about  him  pass  unchallenged.  I 
propose  to  you  that  we  should  discuss  the 
question  of  God  without  entangling  ourselves 
in  advance  in  the  monistic  assumption.  Is  it 
probable  that  there  is  any  superhuman  con- 
sciousness at  all,  in  the  first  place  ? When  that 
is  settled,  the  further  question  whether  its  form 
be  monistic  or  pluralistic  is  in  order. 

Before  advancing  to  either  question,  how- 
ever, and  I shall  have  to  deal  with  both  but 
very  briefly  after  what  has  been  said  already,  let 
me  finish  our  retrospective  survey  by  one  more 

295 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


remark  about  the  curious  logical  situation  of 
the  absolutists.  For  what  have  they  invoked 
the  absolute  except  as  a being  the  peculiar 
inner  form  of  which  shall  enable  it  to  over- 
come the  contradictions  with  which  intellectu- 
alism  has  found  the  finite  many  as  such  to  be 
infected  ? The  many-in-one  character  that,  as 
we  have  seen,  every  smallest  tract  of  finite 
experience  offers,  is  considered  by  intellectual- 
ism  to  be  fatal  to  the  reality  of  finite  experi- 
ence. What  can  be  distinguished,  it  tells  us,  is 
separate ; and  what  is  separate  is  unrelated,  for 
a relation,  being  a ‘ between,’  would  bring  only 
a twofold  separation.  Hegel,  Royce,  Bradley, 
and  the  Oxford  absolutists  in  general  seem  to 
agree  about  this  logical  absurdity  of  manyness- 
in-oneness  in  the  only  places  where  it  is  empiri- 
cally found.  But  see  the  curious  tactics ! Is  the 
absurdity  reduced  in  the  absolute  being  whom 
they  call  in  to  relieve  it  ? Quite  otherwise, 
for  that  being  shows  it  on  an  infinitely  greater 
scale,  and  flaunts  it  in  its  very  definition.  The 
fact  of  its  not  being  related  to  any  outward  en- 
vironment, the  fact  that  all  relations  are  inside 


296 


VII.  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 


of  itself,  does  n’t  save  it,  for  Mr.  Bradley’s 
great  argument  against  the  finite  is  that  in  any 
given  bit  of  it  (a  bit  of  sugar,  for  instance)  the 
presence  of  a plurality  of  characters  (whiteness 
and  sweetness,  for  example)  is  self-contradic- 
tory; so  that  in  the  final  end  all  that  the  ab- 
solute’s name  appears  to  stand  for  is  the  per- 
sistent claim  of  outraged  human  nature  that 
reality  shall  not  be  called  absurd.  Somewhere 
there  must  be  an  aspect  of  it  guiltless  of  self- 
contradiction.  All  we  can  see  of  the  absolute, 
meanwhile,  is  guilty  in  the  same  way  in  which 
the  finite  is.  Intellectualism  sees  what  it  calls 
the  guilt,  when  comminuted  in  the  finite  object ; 
but  is  too  near-sighted  to  see  it  in  the  more 
enormous  object.  Yet  the  absolute’s  constitu- 
tion, if  imagined  at  all,  has  to  be  imagined  after 
the  analogy  of  some  bit  of  finite  experience. 
Take  any  real  bit,  suppress  its  environment  and 
then  magnify  it  to  monstrosity,  and  you  get 
identically  the  type  of  structure  of  the  abso- 
lute. It  is  obvious  that  all  your  difficulties  here 
remain  and  go  with  you.  If  the  relative  expe- 
rience was  inwardly  absurd,  the  absolute  ex- 

297 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


perience  is  infinitely  more  so.  Intellectualism, 
in  short,  strains  off  the  gnat,  but  swallows  the 
whole  camel.  But  this  polemic  against  the 
absolute  is  as  odious  to  me  as  it  is  to  you, 
so  I will  say  no  more  about  that  being.  It  is 
only  one  of  those  wills  of  the  wisp,  those  lights 
that  do  mislead  the  morn,  that  have  so  often 
impeded  the  clear  progress  of  philosophy, 
so  I will  turn  to  the  more  general  positive 
question  of  whether  superhuman  unities  of 
consciousness  should  be  considered  as  more 
probable  or  more  improbable. 

In  a former  lecture  I went  over  some  of  the 
fechnerian  reasons  for  their  plausibility,  or 
reasons  that  at  least  replied  to  our  more  obvi- 
ous grounds  of  doubt  concerning  them.  The 
numerous  facts  of  divided  or  split  human  per- 
sonality which  the  genius  of  certain  medical 
men,  as  Janet,  Freud,  Prince,  Sidis,  and  others, 
have  unearthed  were  unknown  in  Fechner’s 
time,  and  neither  the  phenomena  of  automatic 
writing  and  speech,  nor  of  mediumsliip  and 
‘ possession  ’ generally,  had  been  recognized  or 
studied  as  we  now  study  them,  so  Fechner’s 

298 


VII.  CONTINUITY  OF  EXPERIENCE 


stock  of  analogies  is  scant  compared  with  our 
present  one.  He  did  the  best  with  what  he 
had,  however.  For  my  own  part  I find  in  some 
of  these  abnormal  or  supernormal  facts  the 
strongest  suggestions  in  favor  of  a superior  co- 
consciousness being  possible.  I doubt  whether 
we  shall  ever  understand  some  of  them  without 
using  the  very  letter  of  Fechner’s  conception 
of  a great  reservoir  in  which  the  memories  of 
earth’s  inhabitants  are  pooled  and  preserved, 
and  from  which,  when  the  threshold  lowrers  or 
the  valve  opens,  information  ordinarily  shut 
out  leaks  into  the  mind  of  exceptional  individ- 
uals among  us.  But  those  regions  of  inquiry 
are  perhaps  too  spook-haunted  to  interest  an 
academic  audience,  and  the  only  evidence  I 
feel  it  now  decorous  to  bring  to  the  support  of 
Fechner  is  drawn  from  ordinary  religious  ex- 
perience. I think  it  may  be  asserted  that  there 
are  religious  experiences  of  a specific  nature, 
not  deducible  by  analogy  or  psychological 
reasoning  from  our  other  sorts  of  experi- 
ence. I think  that  they  point  with  reasonable 
probability  to  the  continuity  of  our  conscious- 

299 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

ness  with  a wider  spiritual  environment  from 
which  the  ordinary  prudential  man  (who  is  the 
only  man  that  scientific  psychology,  so  called, 
takes  cognizance  of)  is  shut  off.  I shall  begin 
my  final  lecture  by  referring  to  them  again 
briefly. 


VIII 


CONCLUSIONS 


LECTURE  VIII 


CONCLUSIONS 

At  the  close  of  my  last  lecture  I referred  to 
the  existence  of  religious  experiences  of  a spe- 
cific nature.  I must  now  explain  just  what  I 
mean  by  such  a claim.  Briefly,  the  facts  I have 
in  mind  may  all  be  described  as  experiences 
of  an  unexpected  life  succeeding  upon  death. 
By  this  I don’t  mean  immortality,  or  the  death 
of  the  body.  I mean  the  deathlike  termination 
of  certain  mental  processes  within  the  individ- 
ual’s experience,  processes  that  run  to  failure, 
and  in  some  individuals,  at  least,  eventuate  in 
despair.  Just  as  romantic  love  seems  a com- 
paratively recent  literary  invention,  so  these 
experiences  of  a life  that  supervenes  upon  de- 
spair seem  to  have  played  no  great  part  in 
official  theology  till  Luther’s  time;  and  pos- 
sibly the  best  way  to  indicate  their  character 
will  be  to  point  to  a certain  contrast  between 
the  inner  life  of  ourselves  and  of  the  ancient 
Greeks  and  Romans. 

Mr.  Chesterton,  I think,  says  somewhere, 
303 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

that  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  in  all  that  con- 
cerned their  moral  life,  were  an  extraordinarily 
solemn  set  of  folks.  The  Athenians  thought 
that  the  very  gods  must  admire  the  rectitude 
of  Phocion  and  Aristides ; and  those  gentlemen 
themselves  were  apparently  of  much  the  same 
opinion.  Cato’s  veracity  was  so  impeccable 
that  the  extremest  incredulity  a Roman  could 
express  of  anything  was  to  say,  ‘ I would  not 
believe  it  even  if  Cato  had  told  me.’  Good  was 
good,  and  bad  was  bad,  for  these  people.  Hy- 
pocrisy, which  church-Christianity  brought  in, 
hardly  existed ; the  naturalistic  system  held 
firm;  its  values  showed  no  hollowness  and 
brooked  no  irony.  The  individual,  if  virtuous 
enough,  could  meet  all  possible  requirements. 
The  pagan  pride  had  never  crumbled.  Luther 
was  the  first  moralist  who  broke  with  any  ef- 
fectiveness through  the  crust  of  all  this  natu- 
ralistic self-sufficiency,  thinking  (and  possibly 
he  was  right)  that  Saint  Paul  had  done  it  al- 
ready. Religious  experience  of  the  lutheran 
type  brings  all  our  naturalistic  standards  to 
bankruptcy.  You  are  strong  only  by  being 

301 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 


weak,  it  shows.  You  cannot  live  on  pride  or 
self-sufficingness.  There  is  a light  in  which 
all  the  naturally  founded  and  currently  ac- 
cepted distinctions,  excellences,  and  safeguards 
of  our  characters  appear  as  utter  childishness. 
Sincerely  to  give  up  one’s  conceit  or  hope  of 
being  good  in  one’s  own  right  is  the  only  door 
to  the  universe’s  deeper  reaches. 

These  deeper  reaches  are  familiar  to  evan- 
gelical Christianity  and  to  what  is  nowadays 
becoming  known  as  ‘mind-cure’  religion  or 
‘new  thought.’  The  phenomenon  is  that  of 
new  ranges  of  life  succeeding  on  our  most  de- 
spairing moments.  There  are  resources  in  us 
that  naturalism  with  its  literal  and  legal  vir- 
tues never  recks  of,  possibilities  that  take  our 
breath  away,  of  another  kind  of  happiness  and 
power,  based  on  giving  up  our  own  will  and 
letting  something  higher  work  for  us,  and  these 
seem  to  show  a world  wider  than  either  physics 
or  philistine  ethics  can  imagine.  Here  is  a 
world  in  which  all  is  well,  in  spite  of  certain 
forms  of  death,  indeed  because  of  certain  forms 
of  death  — death  of  hope,  death  of  strength, 

305 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

death  of  responsibility,  of  fear  and  worry,  com- 
petency and  desert,  death  of  everything  that 
paganism,  naturalism,  and  legalism  pin  their 
faith  on  and  tie  their  trust  to. 

Reason,  operating  on  our  other  experiences, 
even  our  psychological  experiences,  would 
never  have  inferred  these  specifically  religious 
experiences  in  advance  of  their  actual  coming. 
She  could  not  suspect  their  existence,  for  they 
are  discontinuous  with  the  ‘natural’  experi- 
ences they  succeed  upon  and  invert  their  val- 
ues. But  as  they  actually  come  and  are  given, 
creation  widens  to  the  view  of  their  recipients. 
They  suggest  that  our  natural  experience,  our 
strictly  moralistic  and  prudential  experience, 
may  be  only  a fragment  of  real  human  experi- 
ence. They  soften  nature’s  outlines  and  open 
out  the  strangest  possibilities  and  perspectives. 

This  is  why  it  seems  to  me  that  the  logical 
understanding,  -working  in  abstraction  from 
such  specifically  religious  experiences,  will  al- 
ways omit  something,  and  fail  to  reach  com- 
pletely adequate  conclusions.  Death  and  fail- 
ure, it  will  always  say,  are  death  and  failure 

306 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 


simply,  and  can  nevermore  be  one  with  life; 
so  religious  experience,  peculiarly  so  called, 
needs,  in  my  opinion,  to  be  carefully  consid- 
ered and  interpreted  by  every  one  who  aspires 
to  reason  out  a more  complete  philosophy. 

The  sort  of  belief  that  religious  experience 
of  this  type  naturally  engenders  in  those  wdio 
have  it  is  fully  in  accord  with  Fechner’s  theo- 
ries. To  quote  words  which  I have  used  else- 
where, the  believer  finds  that  the  tenderer 
parts  of  his  personal  life  are  continuous  wfith  a 
more  of  the  same  quality  wdiich  is  operative  in 
the  universe  outside  of  him  and  wrhich  he  can 
keep  in  working  touch  with,  and  in  a fashion 
get  on  board  of  and  save  himself,  when  all  his 
lower  being  has  gone  to  pieces  in  the  wreck.  In 
a word,  the  believer  is  continuous,  to  his  own 
consciousness,  at  any  rate,  wdth  a wider  self 
from  which  saving  experiences  flowr  in.  Those 
who  have  such  experiences  distinctly  enough 
and  often  enough  to  live  in  the  light  of  them 
remain  quite  unmoved  by  criticism,  from  what- 
ever quarter  it  may  come,  be  it  academic  or 
scientific,  or  be  it  merely  the  voice  of  logical 

307 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


common  sense.  They  have  had  their  vision 
and  they  know — that  is  enough — that  we  in- 
habit an  invisible  spiritual  environment  from 
which  help  comes,  our  soul  being  mysteriously 
one  with  a larger  soul  whose  instruments  we 
are. 

One  may  therefore  plead,  I think,  that  Fech- 
ner’s  ideas  are  not  without  direct  empirical 
verification.  There  is  at  any  rate  one  side  of 
life  which  would  be  easily  explicable  if  those 
ideas  were  true,  but  of  which  there  appears  no 
clear  explanation  so  long  as  we  assume  either 
with  naturalism  that  human  consciousness  is 
the  highest  consciousness  there  is,  or  with 
dualistic  theism  that  there  is  a higher  mind  in 
the  cosmos,  but  that  it  is  discontinuous  with 
our  own.  It  has  always  been  a matter  of  sur- 
prise with  me  that  philosophers  of  the  absolute 
should  have  shown  so  little  interest  in  this  de- 
partment of  life,  and  so  seldom  put  its  pheno- 
mena in  evidence,  even  when  it  seemed  obvious 
that  personal  experience  of  some  kind  must 
have  made  their  confidence  in  their  own  vision 
so  strong.  The  logician’s  bias  has  always  been 

308 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 


too  much  with  them.  They  have  preferred  the 
thinner  to  the  thicker  method,  dialectical  ab- 
straction being  so  much  more  dignified  and 
academic  than  the  confused  and  unwholesome 
facts  of  persona]  biography. 

In  spite  of  rationalism’s  disdain  for  the  par- 
ticular, the  personal,  and  the  unwholesome,  the 
drift  of  all  the  evidence  we  have  seems  to  me 
to  sweep  us  very  strongly  towards  the  belief 
in  some  form  of  superhuman  life  with  which  we 
may,  unknown  to  ourselves,  be  co-conscious. 
We  may  be  in  the  universe  as  dogs  and  cats 
are  in  our  libraries,  seeing  the  books  and  hear- 
ing the  conversation,  but  having  no  inkling  of 
the  meaning  of  it  all.  The  intellectualist  ob- 
jections to  this  fall  away  when  the  authority 
of  intellectualist  logic  is  undermined  by  criti- 
cism, and  then  the  positive  empirical  evidence 
remains.  The  analogies  with  ordinary  psy- 
chology and  with  the  facts  of  pathology,  with 
those  of  psychical  research,  so  called,  and  with 
those  of  religious  experience,  establish,  when 
taken  together,  a decidedly  formidable  proba- 
bility in  favor  of  a general  view  of  the  world 

309 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

almost  identical  with  Fechner’s.  The  outlines 
of  the  superhuman  consciousness  thus  made 
probable  must  remain,  however,  very  vague, 
and  the  number  of  functionally  distinct  ‘selves’ 
it  comports  and  carries  has  to  be  left  entirely 
problematic.  It  may  be  polytheistically  or  it 
may  be  monotheistically  conceived  of.  Fech- 
ner,  with  his  distinct  earth-soul  functioning  as 
our  guardian  angel,  seems  to  me  clearly  poly- 
theistic ; but  the  word  ‘ polytheism  ’ usually 
gives  offence,  so  perhaps  it  is  better  not  to  use 
it.  Only  one  thing  is  certain,  and  that  is  the 
result  of  our  criticism  of  the  absolute : the  only 
way  to  escape  from  the  paradoxes  and  perplex- 
ities that  a consistently  thought-out  monistio 
universe  suffers  from  as  from  a species  of  auto- 
intoxication— the  mystery  of  the  ‘fall ’ namely, 
of  reality  lapsing  into  appearance,  truth  into 
error,  perfection  into  imperfection ; of  evil,  in 
short;  the  mystery  of  universal  determinism, 
of  the  block-universe  eternal  and  without  a 
history,  etc.; — the  only  way  of  escape,  I say, 
from  all  this  is  to  be  frankly  pluralistic  and  as- 
sume that  the  superhuman  consciousness,  how- 

310 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 


ever  vast  it  may  be,  has  itself  an  external  envi- 
ronment, and  consequently  is  finite.  Present 
day  monism  carefully  repudiates  complicity 
with  spinozistic  monism.  In  that,  it  explains, 
the  many  get  dissolved  in  the  one  and  lost, 
whereas  in  the  improved  idealistic  form  they 
get  preserved  in  all  their  manyness  as  the  one’s 
eternal  object.  The  absolute  itself  is  thus  re- 
presented by  absolutists  as  having  a pluralistic 
object.  But  if  even  the  absolute  has  to  have  a 
pluralistic  vision,  wThy  should  we  ourselves  hes- 
itate to  be  pluralists  on  our  own  sole  account? 
Why  should  we  envelop  our  many  with  the 
‘ one  ’ that  brings  so  much  poison  in  its  train  ? 

The  line  of  least  resistance,  then,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  both  in  theology  and  in  philosophy,  is  to 
accept,  along  with  the  superhuman  conscious- 
ness, the  notion  that  it  is  not  all-embracing,  the 
notion,  in  other  words,  that  there  is  a God,  but 
that  he  is  finite,  either  in  power  or  in  know- 
ledge, or  in  both  at  once.  These,  I need  hardly 
tell  you,  are  the  terms  in  which  common  men 
have  usually  carried  on  their  active  commerce 
with  God;  and  the  monistic  perfections  that 

311 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


make  the  notion  of  him  so  paradoxical  practi- 
cally and  morally  are  the  colder  addition  of 
remote  professorial  minds  operating  in  distans 
upon  conceptual  substitutes  for  him  alone. 

Why  cannot  ‘ experience  ’ and  ‘ reason  ’ meet 
on  this  common  ground  ? Why  cannot  they 
compromise  ? May  not  the  godlessness  usu- 
ally but  needlessly  associated  with  the  philoso- 
phy of  immediate  experience  give  way  to  a 
theism  now  seen  to  follow  directly  from  that 
experience  more  widely  taken  ? and  may  not 
rationalism,  satisfied  with  seeing  her  a 'priori 
proofs  of  God  so  effectively  replaced  by  em- 
pirical evidence,  abate  something  of  her  abso- 
lutist claims  ? Let  God  but  have  the  least 
infinitesimal  other  of  any  kind  beside  him, 
and  empiricism  and  rationalism  might  strike 
hands  in  a lasting  treaty  of  peace.  Both  might 
then  leave  abstract  thinness  behind  them,  and 
seek  together,  as  scientific  men  seek,  by  using 
all  the  analogies  and  data  within  reach,  to 
build  up  the  most  probable  approximate  idea 
of  what  the  divine  consciousness  concretely 
may  be  like.  I venture  to  beg  the  younger 

312 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 

Oxford  idealists  to  consider  seriously  this  al- 
ternative. Few  men  are  as  qualified  by  their 
intellectual  gifts  to  reap  the  harvests  that  seem 
certain  to  any  one  who,  like  Fechner  and  Berg- 
son, will  leave  the  thinner  for  the  thicker  path. 

Compromise  and  mediation  are  inseparable 
from  the  pluralistic  philosophy.  Only  monistic 
dogmatism  can  say  of  any  of  its  hypotheses, 
‘ It  is  either  that  or  nothing ; take  it  or  leave  it 
just  as  it  stands.’  The  type  of  monism  preva- 
lent at  Oxford  has  kept  this  steep  and  brit- 
tle attitude,  partly  through  the  proverbial  aca- 
demic preference  for  thin  and  elegant  logical 
solutions,  partly  from  a mistaken  notion  that 
the  only  solidly  grounded  basis  for  religion 
was  along  those  lines.  If  Oxford  men  could 
be  ignorant  of  anything,  it  might  almost  seem 
that  they  had  remained  ignorant  of  the  great 
empirical  movement  towards  a pluralistic 
panpsychic  view  of  the  universe,  into  which 
our  own  generation  has  been  drawn,  and 
which  threatens  to  short-circuit  their  meth- 
ods entirely  and  become  their  religious  rival 
unless  they  are  willing  to  make  themselves  its 

313 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

allies.  Yet,  wedded  as  they  seem  to  be  to  the 
logical  machinery  and  technical  apparatus  of 
absolutism,  I cannot  but  believe  that  their 
fidelity  to  the  religious  ideal  in  general  is 
deeper  still.  Especially  do  I find  it  hard  to 
believe  that  the  more  clerical  adherents  of  the 
school  would  hold  so  fast  to  its  particular  ma- 
chinery if  only  they  could  be  made  to  think 
that  religion  could  be  secured  in  some  other 
wray.  Let  empiricism  once  become  associated 
with  religion,  as  hitherto,  through  some  strange 
misunderstanding,  it  has  been  associated  with 
irreligion,  and  I believe  that  a new  era  of  reli- 
gion as  well  as  of  philosophy  will  be  ready  to 
begin.  That  great  awakening  of  a new  popular 
interest  in  philosophy,  which  is  so  striking  a 
phenomenon  at  the  present  day  in  all  coun- 
tries, is  undoubtedly  due  in  part  to  religious  de- 
mands. As  the  authority  of  past  tradition  tends 
more  and  more  to  crumble,  men  naturally  turn 
a wistful  ear  to  the  authority  of  reason  or  to  the 
evidence  of  present  fact.  They  will  assuredly 
not  be  disappointed  if  they  open  their  minds  to 
wdiat  the  thicker  and  more  radical  empiricism 

314 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 

has  to  say.  I fully  believe  that  such  an  empiri- 
cism is  a more  natural  ally  than  dialectics  ever 
were,  or  can  be,  of  the  religious  life.  It  is  true 
that  superstitions  and  wild-growing  over-beliefs 
of  all  sorts  will  undoubtedly  begin  to  abound  if 
the  notion  of  higher  consciousnesses  enveloping 
ours,  of  fechnerian  earth-souls  and  the  like, 
grows  orthodox  and  fashionable ; still  more  will 
they  superabound  if  science  ever  puts  her  ap- 
proving stamp  on  the  phenomena  of  which 
Frederic  Myers  so  earnestly  advocated  the 
scientific  recognition,  the  phenomena  of  psychic 
research  so-called  — and  I myself  firmly  be- 
lieve that  most  of  these  phenomena  are  rooted 
in  reality.  But  ought  one  seriously  to  allow 
such  a timid  consideration  as  that  to  deter  one 
from  following  the  evident  path  of  greatest 
religious  promise  ? Since  wdien,  in  this  mixed 
world,  was  any  good  thing  given  us  in  purest 
outline  and  isolation  ? One  of  the  chief  charac- 
teristics of  life  is  life’s  redundancy.  The  sole 
condition  of  our  having  anything,  no  matter 
what,  is  that  we  should  have  so  much  of  it,  that 
we  are  fortunate  if  we  do  not  grow  sick  of  the 

315 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

sight  and  sound  of  it  altogether.  Everything 
is  smothered  in  the  litter  that  is  fated  to  ac- 
company it.  Without  too  much  you  cannot 
have  enough,  of  anything.  Lots  of  inferior 
books,  lots  of  bad  statues,  lots  of  dull  speeches, 
of  tenth-rate  men  and  women,  as  a condition 
of  the  few  precious  specimens  in  either  kind 
being  realized!  The  gold-dust  comes  to  birth 
with  the  quartz-sand  all  around  it,  and  this 
is  as  much  a condition  of  religion  as  of  any 
other  excellent  possession.  There  must  be 
extrication ; there  must  be  competition  for 
survival ; but  the  clay  matrix  and  the  noble  gem 
must  first  come  into  being  unsifted.  Once 
extricated,  the  gem  can  be  examined  separately, 
conceptualized,  defined,  and  insulated.  But 
this  process  of  extrication  cannot  be  short- 
circuited  — or  if  it  is,  you  get  the  thin  inferior 
abstractions  which  we  have  seen,  either  the 
hollow  unreal  god  of  scholastic  theology,  or 
the  unintelligible  pantheistic  monster,  instead 
of  the  more  living  divine  reality  with  which 
it  appears  certain  that  empirical  methods  tend 
to  connect  men  in  imagination. 

316 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 


Arrived  at  this  point,  I ask  you  to  go  back 
to  my  first  lecture  and  remember,  if  you  can, 
what  I quoted  there  from  your  own  Professor 
Jacks  — what  he  said  about  the  philosopher 
himself  being  taken  up  into  the  universe  which 
he  is  accounting  for.  This  is  the  fechnerian 
as  well  as  the  hegelian  view,  and  thus  our  end 
rejoins  harmoniously  our  beginning.  Philoso- 
phies are  intimate  parts  of  the  universe,  they 
express  something  of  its  own  thought  of  itself. 
A philosophy  may  indeed  be  a most  momen- 
tous reaction  of  the  universe  upon  itself.  It 
may,  as  I said,  possess  and  handle  itself  dif- 
ferently in  consequence  of  us  philosophers,  with 
our  theories,  being  here;  it  may  trust  itself  or 
mistrust  itself  the  more,  and,  by  doing  the  one 
or  the  other,  deserve  more  the  trust  or  the  mis- 
trust. What  mistrusts  itself  deserves  mistrust. 

This  is  the  philosophy  of  humanism  in  the 
widest  sense.  Our  philosophies  swell  the  cur- 
rent of  being,  add  their  character  to  it.  They 
are  part  of  all  that  we  have  met,  of  all  that 
makes  us  be.  As  a French  philosopher  says, 
‘Nous  sommes  du  reel  dans  le  reel.’  Our 

317 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


thoughts  determine  our  acts,  and  our  acts  rede 
termine  the  previous  nature  of  the  world. 

Thus  does  foreignness  get  banished  from 
our  world,  and  far  more  so  wrhen  we  take  the 
system  of  it  pluralistically  than  when  we  take 
it  monistically.  We  are  indeed  internal  parts 
of  God  and  not  external  creations,  on  any 
possible  reading  of  the  panpsychic  system. 
Yet  because  God  is  not  the  absolute,  but  is 
himself  a part  when  the  system  is  conceived 
pluralistically,  his  functions  can  be  taken  as 
not  wdiolly  dissimilar  to  those  of  the  other 
smaller  parts, — as  similar  to  our  functions 
consequently. 

Having  an  environment,  being  in  time,  and 
working  out  a history  just  like  ourselves,  he 
escapes  from  the  foreignness  from  all  that  is 
human,  of  the  static  timeless  perfect  abso- 
lute. 

Remember  that  one  of  our  troubles  with  that 
was  its  essential  foreignness  and  monstrosity  — 
there  really  is  no  other  word  for  it  than  that. 
Its  having  the  all-inclusive  form  gave  to  it  an 
essentially  heterogeneous  nature  from  our- 

318 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 


selves.  And  this  great  difference  between  ab- 
solutism and  pluralism  demands  no  difference 
in  the  universe’s  material  content  — it  follows 
from  a difference  in  the  form  alone.  The  all- 
form or  monistic  form  makes  the  foreignness 
result,  the  each-form  or  pluralistic  form  leaves 
the  intimacy  undisturbed. 

No  matter  what  the  content  of  the  universe 
may  be,  if  you  only  allow  that  it  is  many  every- 
where and  always,  that  nothing  real  escapes 
from  having  an  environment ; so  far  from 
defeating  its  rationality,  as  the  absolutists  so 
unanimously  pretend,  you  leave  it  in  posses- 
sion of  the  maximum  amount  of  rationality 
practically  attainable  by  our  minds.  Your  rela- 
tions with  it,  intellectual,  emotional,  and  active, 
remain  fluent  and  congruous  with  your  own 
nature’s  chief  demands. 

It  would  be  a pity  if  the  word  ‘ rationality  ’ 
were  allowed  to  give  us  trouble  here.  It  is  one 
of  those  eulogistic  words  that  both  sides  claim 
— for  almost  no  one  is  willing  to  advertise  his 
philosophy  as  a system  of  irrationality.  But 
like  most  of  the  words  which  people  used  eulo- 

319 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


gistically,  the  word  ‘ rational  ’ carries  too  many 
meanings.  The  most  objective  one  is  that  of 
the  older  logic  — the  connexion  between  two 
things  is  rational  when  you  can  infer  one  from 
the  other,  mortal  from  Socrates,  e.  g.;  and  you 
can  do  that  only  when  they  have  a quality  in 
common.  But  this  kind  of  rationality  is  just 
that  logic  of  identity  which  all  disciples  of  Hegel 
find  insufficient.  They  supersede  it  by  the 
higher  rationality  of  negation  and  contradic- 
tion and  make  the  notion  vague  again.  Then 
you  get  the  sesthetic  or  teleologic  kinds  of  ra- 
tionality, saying  that  whatever  fits  in  any  way, 
whatever  is  beautiful  or  good,  whatever  is  pur- 
posive or  gratifies  desire,  is  rational  in  so  far 
forth.  Then  again,  according  to  Hegel,  what- 
ever is  ‘real’  is  rational.  I myself  said  awhile 
ago  that  whatever  lets  loose  any  action  which  we 
are  fond  of  exerting  seems  rational.  It  would  be 
better  to  give  up  the  word  ‘ rational  ’ altogether 
than  to  get  into  a merely  verbal  fight  about 
who  has  the  best  right  to  keep  it. 

Perhaps  the  words  ‘ foreignness ’ and  ‘inti- 
macy,’ which  I put  forward  in  my  first  lecture, 

320 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 


express  the  contrast  I insist  on  better  than  the 
words  ‘rationality’  and  ‘irrationality’ — let  us 
stick  to  them,  then.  I now  say  that  the  notion 
of  the  ‘one’  breeds  foreignness  and  that  of  the 

‘ many  ’ intimacy,  for  reasons  which  I have 

* 

urged  at  only  too  great  length,  and  with  wrhich, 
whether  they  convince  you  or  not,  I may  sup- 
pose that  you  are  now  well  acquainted.  But 
what  at  bottom  is  meant  by  calling  the  universe 
many  or  by  calling  it  one  ? 

Pragmatically  interpreted,  pluralism  or  the 
doctrine  that  it  is  many  means  only  that  the 
sundry  parts  of  reality  may  be  externally  re- 
lated. Everything  you  can  think  of,  however 
vast  or  inclusive,  has  on  the  pluralistic  view  a 
genuinely  ‘external’  environment  of  some  sort 
or  amount.  Things  are  ‘with’  one  another  in 
many  ways,  but  nothing  includes  everything, 
or  dominates  over  everything.  The  word  ‘ and’ 
trails  along  after  every  sentence.  Something 
always  escapes.  ‘Ever  not  quite’  has  to  be  said 
of  the  best  attempts  made  anywrhere  in  the 
universe  at  attaining  all-inclusiveness.  The 
pluralistic  world  is  thus  more  like  a federal 

321 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


republic  than  like  an  empire  or  a kingdom. 
However  much  may  be  collected,  however 
much  may  report  itself  as  present  at  any 
effective  centre  of  consciousness  or  action, 
something  else  is  self-governed  and  absent  and 
unreduced  to  unity. 

Monism,  on  the  other  hand,  insists  that  when 
you  come  down  to  reality  as  such,  to  the  reality 
of  realities,  everything  is  present  to  everything 
else  in  one  vast  instantaneous  co-implicated 
completeness — nothing  can  in  any  sense,  func- 
tional or  substantial,  be  really  absent  from 
anything  else,  all  things  interpenetrate  and 
telescope  together  in  the  great  total  conflux. 

For  pluralism,  all  that  we  are  required  to 
admit  as  the  constitution  of  reality  is  what  we 
ourselves  find  empirically  realized  in  every 
minimum  of  finite  life.  Briefly  it  is  this,  that 
nothing  real  is  absolutely  simple,  that  every 
smallest  bit  of  experience  is  a multum  in  parvo 
plurally  related,  that  each  relation  is  one  as- 
pect, character,  or  function,  way  of  its  being 
taken,  or  way  of  its  taking  something  else ; and 
that  a bit  of  reality  when  actively  engaged  in 

322 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 


one  of  these  relations  is  not  by  that  very  fact 
engaged  in  all  the  other  relations  simulta- 
neously. The  relations  are  not  all  what  the 
French  call  solidaires  with  one  another.  With- 
out losing  its  identity  a thing  can  either  take 
up  or  drop  another  thing,  like  the  log  I spoke 
of,  which  by  taking  up  new  carriers  and  drop- 
ping old  ones  can  travel  anywhere  with  a light 
escort. 

For  monism,  on  the  contrary,  everything, 
whether  we  realize  it  or  not,  drags  the  whole 
universe  along  with  itself  and  drops  nothing. 
The  log  starts  and  arrives  with  all  its  carriers 
supporting  it.  If  a thing  were  once  discon- 
nected, it  could  never  be  connected  again,  ac- 
cording to  monism.  The  pragmatic  difference 
between  the  two  systems  is  thus  a definite  one. 
It  is  just  thus,  that  if  a is  once  out  of  sight  of  b 
or  out  of  touch  with  it,  or,  more  briefly,  ‘out’ 
of  it  at  all,  then,  according  to  monism,  it  must 
always  remain  so,  they  can  never  get  together ; 
whereas  pluralism  admits  that  on  another  oc- 
casion they  may  work  together,  or  in  some 
way  be  connected  again.  Monism  allows  for  no 

323 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

such  things  as  ‘other  occasions’  in  reality  — 
in  real  or  absolute  reality,  that  is. 

The  difference  I try  to  describe  amounts, 
you  see,  to  nothing  more  than  the  difference 
between  what  I formerly  called  the  each-form 
and  the  all-form  of  reality.  Pluralism  lets 
things  really  exist  in  the  each-form  or  distribu- 
tively.  Monism  thinks  that  the  all-form  or  col- 
lective-unit form  is  the  only  form  that  is  ra- 
tional. The  all-form  allows  of  no  taking  up 
and  dropping  of  connexions,  for  in  the  all  the 
parts  are  essentially  and  eternally  co-implicated. 
In  the  each-form,  on  the  contrary,  a thing  may 
be  connected  by  intermediary  things,  with  a 
thing  with  which  it  has  no  immediate  or  essen- 
tial connexion.  It  is  thus  at  all  times  in  many 
possible  connexions  which  are  not  necessarily 
actualized  at  the  moment.  They  depend  on 
which  actual  path  of  intermediation  it  may 
functionally  strike  into:  the  word  ‘or’  names 
a genuine  reality.  Thus,  as  I speak  here,  I may 
look  ahead  or  to  the  right  or  to  the  left,  and  in 
either  case  the  intervening  space  and  air  and 
ether  enable  me  to  see  the  faces  of  a different 

324 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 


portion  of  this  audience.  My  being  here  is 
independent  of  any  one  set  of  these  faces. 

If  the  each-form  be  the  eternal  form  of 
reality  no  less  than  it  is  the  form  of  temporal 
appearance,  we  still  have  a coherent  world, 
and  not  an  incarnate  incoherence,  as  is  charged 
by  so  many  absolutists.  Our  ‘multiverse’  still 
makes  a ‘universe’ ; for  every  part,  tho  it  may 
not  be  in  actual  or  immediate  connexion,  is 
nevertheless  in  some  possible  or  mediated  con- 
nexion, with  every  other  part  however  remote, 
through  the  fact  that  each  part  hangs  together 
with  its  very  next  neighbors  in  inextricable 
interfusion.  The  type  of  union,  it  is  true,  is 
different  here  from  the  monistic  type  of  all- 
einheit.  It  is  not  a universal  co-implication, 
or  integration  of  all  things  durcheinander.  It 
is  what  I call  the  strung-along  type,  the  type 
of  continuity,  contiguity,  or  concatenation.  If 
you  prefer  greek  words,  you  may  call  it  the 
synechistic  type.  At  all  events,  you  see  that  it 
forms  a definitely  conceivable  alternative  to  the 
through -and-through  unity  of  all  things  at  once, 
which  is  the  type  opposed  to  it  by  monism.  You 

325 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 

see  also  that  it  stands  or  falls  with  the  notion  I 
have  taken  such  pains  to  defend,  of  the  through- 
and-through  union  of  adjacent  minima  of 
experience,  of  the  confluence  of  every  passing 
moment  of  concretely  felt  experience  with  its 
immediately  next  neighbors.  The  recognition 
of  this  fact  of  coalescence  of  next  with  next 
in  concrete  experience,  so  that  all  the  insulat- 
ing cuts  we  make  there  are  artificial  products 
of  the  conceptualizing  faculty,  is  what  distin- 
guishes the  empiricism  which  I call  ‘radical,’ 
from  the  bugaboo  empiricism  of  the  tradi- 
tional rationalist  critics,  which  (rightly  or 
wrongly)  is  accused  of  chopping  up  experience 
into  atomistic  sensations,  incapable  of  union 
with  one  another  until  a purely  intellectual 
principle  has  swooped  down  upon  them  from 
on  high  and  folded  them  in  its  own  conjunc- 
tive categories. 

Here,  then,  you  have  the  plain  alternative, 
and  the  full  mystery  of  the  difference  between 
pluralism  and  monism,  as  clearly  as  I can  set 
it  forth  on  this  occasion.  It  packs  up  into  a 
nutshell : — Is  the  manyness  in  oneness  that 

326 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 


indubitably  characterizes  the  world  we  in- 
habit, a property  only  of  the  absolute  whole  of 
things,  so  that  you  must  postulate  that  one- 
enormous-whole  indivisibly  as  the  prius  of 
there  being  any  many  at  all  — in  other  words, 
start  with  the  rationalistic  block-universe, 
entire,  unmitigated,  and  complete  ? — or  can 
the  finite  elements  have  their  own  aboriginal 
forms  of  manyness  in  oneness,  and  where  they 
have  no  immediate  oneness  still  be  continued 
into  one  another  by  intermediary  terms — each 
one  of  these  terms  being  one  with  its  next 
neighbors,  and  yet  the  total  ‘oneness’  never 
getting  absolutely  complete  ? 

The  alternative  is  definite.  It  seems  to  me, 
moreover,  that  the  twro  horns  of  it  make  prag- 
matically different  ethical  appeals  — at  least 
they  may  do  so,  to  certain  individuals.  But  if 
you  consider  the  pluralistic  horn  to  be  intrinsi- 
cally irrational,  self-contradictory,  and  absurd, 
I can  now  say  no  more  in  its  defence.  Having 
done  what  I could  in  my  earlier  lectures  to 
break  the  edge  of  the  intellectualistic  redac- 
tiones  ad  absurdum,  I must  leave  the  issue  in 


327 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


your  hands.  Whatever  I may  say,  each  of  you 
will  be  sure  to  take  pluralism  or  leave  it,  just 
as  your  own  sense  of  rationality  moves  and 
inclines.  The  only  thing  I emphatically  insist 
upon  is  that  it  is  a fully  co-ordinate  hypothe- 
sis with  monism.  This  world  may , in  the  last 
resort,  be  a block-universe ; but  on  the  other 
hand  it  may  be  a universe  only  strung-along, 
not  rounded  in  and  closed.  Reality  may  exist 
distributively  just  as  it  sensibly  seems  to,  after 
all.  On  that  possibility  I do  insist. 

One’s  general  vision  of  the  probable  usually 
decides  such  alternatives.  They  illustrate 
what  I once  wrote  of  as  the  ‘will  to  believe.’ 
In  some  of  my  lectures  at  Harvard  I have 
spoken  of  what  I call  the  ‘faith-ladder,’  as 
something  quite  different  from  the  sorites  of  the 
logic-books,  yet  seeming  to  have  an  analogous 
form.  I think  you  will  quickly  recognize  in 
yourselves,  as  I describe  it,  the  mental  process 
to  which  I give  this  name. 

A conception  of  the  world  arises  in  you 
somehow,  no  matter  how.  Is  it  true  or  not? 
you  ask. 


328 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 


It  might  be  true  somewhere,  you  say,  for  it 
is  not  self-contradictory. 

It  may  be  true,  you  continue,  even  here  and 
now. 

It  is  fit  to  be  true,  it  would  be  well  if  it  were 
true,  it  ought  to  be  true,  you  presently  feel. 

It  must  be  true,  something  persuasive  in  you 
whispers  next;  and  then  — as  a final  result  — 

It  shall  be  held  for  true,  you  decide ; it  shall  be 
as  if  true,  for  you. 

And  your  acting  thus  may  in  certain  special 
cases  be  a means  of  making  it  securely  true  in 
the  end. 

Not  one  step  in  this  process  is  logical,  yet  it 
is  the  way  in  which  monists  and  pluralists  alike 
espouse  and  hold  fast  to  their  visions.  It  is  life 
exceeding  logic,  it  is  the  practical  reason  for 
which  the  theoretic  reason  finds  arguments 
after  the  conclusion  is  once  there.  In  just  this 
way  do  some  of  us  hold  to  the  unfinished  plu- 
ralistic universe ; in  just  this  way  do  others  hold 
to  the  timeless  universe  eternally  complete. 

Meanwhile  the  incompleteness  of  the  plural- 
istic universe,  thus  assumed  and  held  to  as  the 


329 


A PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE 


most  probable  hypothesis,  is  also  represented 
by  the  pluralistic  philosophy  as  being  self- 
reparative  through  us,  as  getting  its  discon- 
nections remedied  in  part  by  our  behavior. 
‘ We  use  what  we  are  and  have,  to  know ; and 
what  we  know,  to  be  and  have  still  more.’ 1 
Thus  do  philosophy  and  reality,  theory  and 
action,  work  in  the  same  circle  indefinitely. 

I have  now  finished  these  poor  lectures,  and 
as  you  look  back  on  them,  they  doubtless  seem 
rambling  and  inconclusive  enough.  My  only 
hope  is  that  they  may  possibly  have  proved 
suggestive ; and  if  indeed  they  have  been  sug- 
gestive of  one  point  of  method,  I am  almost 
willing  to  let  all  other  suggestions  go.  That 
point  is  that  it  is  high  time  for  the  basis  of  dis- 
cussion in  these  questions  to  be  broadened  and 
thickened  up.  It  is  for  that  that  I have  brought 
in  Fechner  and  Bergson,  and  descriptive  psy- 
chology and  religious  experiences,  and  have 
ventured  even  to  hint  at  psychical  research 
and  other  wild  beasts  of  the  philosophic  desert. 
Owing  possibly  to  the  fact  that  Plato  and 

330 


VIII.  CONCLUSIONS 

Aristotle,  with  their  intellectualism,  are  the 
basis  of  philosophic  study  here,  the  Oxford 
brand  of  transcendentalism  seems  to  me  to 
have  confined  itself  too  exclusively  to  thin 
logical  considerations,  that  would  hold  good 
in  all  conceivable  worlds,  worlds  of  an  empiri- 
cal constitution  entirely  different  from  ours. 
It  is  as  if  the  actual  peculiarities  of  the  world 
that  is  were  entirely  irrelevant  to  the  content 
of  truth.  But  they  cannot  be  irrelevant;  and 
the  philosophy  of  the  future  must  imitate  the 
sciences  in  taking  them  more  and  more  elabo- 
rately into  account.  I urge  some  of  the  younger 
members  of  this  learned  audience  to  lay  this 
hint  to  heart.  If  you  can  do  so  effectively, 
making  still  more  concrete  advances  upon  the 
path  which  Fechner  and  Bergson  have  so 
enticingly  opened  up,  if  you  can  gather  phi- 
losophic conclusions  of  any  kind,  monistic  or 
pluralistic,  from  the  'particulars  of  life,  I will 
say,  as  I now  do  say,  with  the  cheerfullest 
of  hearts,  ‘Ring  out,  ring  out  my  mournful 
rhymes,  but  ring  the  fuller  minstrel  in.’ 


NOTES 


% 


NOTES 


LECTURE  I 

Note  1,  page  5.  — Bailey:  op.  cit..  First  Series,  p.  52. 

Note  2,  page  11.  — Smaller  Logic,  § 194. 

Note  3,  page  16.  — Exploratio  philosophica,  Part  I,  1865, 
pp.  xxxviii,  130. 

Note  4,  page  20.  — Hinneberg : Die  Kultur  der  Gegenwart  : 
Systematische  Pkilosophie.  Leipzig : Teubner,  1907. 

LECTURE  II 

Note  1,  page  50.  — The  difference  is  that  the  bad  parts  of 
this  finite  are  eternal  and  essential  for  absolutists,  whereas 
pluralists  may  hope  that  they  will  eventually  get  sloughed  off 
and  become  as  if  they  had  not  been. 

Note  2,  page  51.  — Quoted  by  W.  Wallace:  Lectures  and 
Essays,  Oxford,  1898,  p.  560. 

Note  3,  page  51.  — Logic,  tr.  Wallace,  1874,  p.  181. 

Note  4,  page  52.  — Ibid.,  p.  304. 

Note  5,  page  53.  — Contemporary  Review,  December,  1907, 
vol.  92,  p.  618. 

Note  6,  page  57.  — Metaphysic,  sec.  69  ff. 

Note  7,  page  62.  — The  World  and  the  Individual,  vol.  i, 
pp.  131-132. 

Note  8,  page  67.  — A good  illustration  of  this  is  to  be  found 
in  a controversy  between  Mr.  Bradley  and  the  present  writer, 
in  Mind  for  1893,  Mr.  Bradley  contending  (if  I understood  him 
rightly)  that  ‘resemblance’  is  an  illegitimate  category,  because 
it  admits  of  degrees,  and  that  the  only  real  relations  in  compari- 
son are  absolute  identity  and  absolute  non-comparability. 

335 


NOTES 


Note  9,  page  75.  — Studies  in  the  Hegelian  Dialectic , p.  184. 
Note  10,  page  75.  — Appearance  and  Reality , 1893,  pp.  141- 
142. 

Note  11,  page  76.  — Cf.  Elements  of  Metaphysics,  p.  88. 
Note  12,  page  77.  — Some  Dogmas  of  Religion,  p.  184. 
Note  13,  page  80.  — For  a more  detailed  criticism  of  Mr. 
Bradley’s  intellectualism,  see  Appendix  A. 


LECTURE  III 

Note  1,  page  94.  — Hegel,  Smaller  Logic,  pp.  184-185. 

Note  2,  page  95.  — Cf.  Hegel’s  fine  vindication  of  this  func- 
tion of  contradiction  in  his  Wissenschaft  der  Logik,  Bk.  ii,  sec. 
1,  chap,  ii,  C,  Anmerkung  3. 

Note  3,  page  95.  — Hegel,  in  Blackwood' s Philosophical 
Classics,  p.  162. 

Note  4,  page  95.  — Wissenschaft  der  Logik,  Bk.  i,  sec.  1, 
chap,  ii,  B,  a. 

Note  5,  page  96.  — Wallace’s  translation  of  the  Smaller 
Logic,  p.  128. 

Note  6,  page  101.  — Joachim,  The  Nature  of  Truth,  Ox- 
ford, 1906,  pp.  22, 178.  The  argument  in  case  the  belief  should 
be  doubted  would  be  the  higher  synthetic  idea : if  two  truths 
were  possible,  the  duality  of  that  possibility  would  itself  be 
the  one  truth  that  would  unite  them. 

Note  7,  page  115.  — The  World  and  the  Individual,  vol.  ii, 
pp.  385,  386,  409. 

Note  8,  page  116.  — The  best  uninspired  argument  (again 
not  ironical !)  which  I know  is  that  in  Miss  M.  W.  Calkins’s 
excellent  book,  The  Persistent  Problems  of  Philosophy,  Mac- 
millan, 1902. 

Note  9,  page  117.  — Cf.  Dr.  Fuller’s  excellent  article,  ‘ Eth- 
336 


NOTES 


ical  monism  and  the  problem  of  evil,’  in  the  Harvard  Journal 
of  Theology,  vol.  i,  No.  2,  April,  1908. 

Note  10,  page  120.  — Metaphysic,  sec.  79. 

Note  11,  page  121.  — Studies  in  the  Hegelian  Dialectic, 
secs.  150,  153. 

Note  12,  page  121.  — The  Nature  of  Truth,  1906,  pp.  170- 
171. 

Note  13,  page  121.  — Ibid.,  p.  179. 

Note  14,  page  123.  — The  psychological  analogy  that  cer- 
tain finite  tracts  of  consciousness  are  composed  of  isolable  parts 
added  together,  cannot  be  used  by  absolutists  as  proof  that 
such  parts  are  essential  elements  of  all  consciousness.  Other 
finite  fields  of  consciousness  seem  in  point  of  fact  not  to  be 
similarly  resolvable  into  isolable  parts. 

Note  15,  page  128.  — Judging  by  the  analogy  of  the  rela- 
tion which  our  central  consciousness  seems  to  bear  to  that 
of  our  spinal  cord,  lower  ganglia,  etc.,  it  would  seem  natural 
to  suppose  that  in  whatever  superhuman  mental  synthesis 
there  may  be,  the  neglect  and  elimination  of  certain  contents 
of  which  we  are  conscious  on  the  human  level  might  be  as 
characteristic  a feature  as  is  the  combination  and  interweav- 
ing of  other  human  contents. 


LECTURE  IV 

Note  1,  page  143.  — The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy, 
p.  227. 

Note  2,  page  165.  — Fechner:  Uber  die  Seelenfrage,  1861, 
p.  170. 

Note  3,  page  168.  — Fechner’s  latest  summarizing  of  his 
views.  Die  Tagesansicht  gegenuber  der  N achtansicht,  Leipzig, 
1879,  is  now,  I understand,  in  process  of  translation.  His 

337 


NOTES 


Little  Book  of  Life  after  Death  exists  already  in  two  American 
versions,  one  published  by  Little,  Brown  & Co.,  Boston,  the 
other  by  the  Open  Court  Co.,  Chicago. 

Note  4,  page  176.  — Mr.  Bradley  ought  to  be  to  some 
degree  exempted  from  my  attack  in  these  last  pages.  Com- 
pare especially  what  he  says  of  non-human  consciousness  in 
his  Appearance  and  Reality,  pp.  269-272. 


LECTURE  V 

Note  1,  page  182.  — Royce:  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philo - 
sophy,  p.  379. 

Note  2,  page  184.  — The  World  and  the  Individual,  vol.  ii, 
pp.  58-62. 

Note  3,  page  190.  — I hold  to  it  still  as  the  best  description 
of  an  enormous  number  of  our  higher  fields  of  consciousness. 
They  demonstrably  do  not  contain  the  lower  states  that  know 
the  same  objects.  Of  other  fields,  however  this  is  not  so  true; 
so,  'n  the  Psychological  Review  for  1895,  vol.  ii,  p.  105  (see 
especially  pp.  119-120),  I frankly  withdrew,  in  principle, 
my  former  objection  to  talking  of  fields  of  consciousness 
being  made  of  simpler  ‘parts,’  leaving  the  facts  to  decide  the 
question  in  each  special  case. 

Note  4,  page  194.  — I abstract  from  the  consciousness 
attached  to  the  whole  itself,  if  such  consciousness  be  there. 


LECTURE  VI 

Note  1,  page  250.  — For  a more  explicit  vindication  of  the 
notion  of  activity,  see  Appendix  B,  where  I try  to  defend  its 
recognition  as  a definite  form  of  immediate  experience  against 
its  rationalistic  critics. 


338 


NOTES 


I subjoin  here  a few  remarks  destined  to  disarm  some  possi- 
ble critics  of  Professor  Bergson,  who,  to  defend  himself  against 
misunderstandings  of  his  meaning,  ought  to  amplify  and  more 
fully  explain  his  statement  that  concepts  have  a practical  but 
not  a theoretical  use.  Understood  in  one  way,  the  thesis 
sounds  indefensible,  for  by  concepts  we  certainly  increase  our 
knowledge  about  things,  and  that  seems  a theoretical  achieve- 
ment, whatever  practical  achievements  may  follow  in  its  train. 
Indeed,  M.  Bergson  might  seem  to  be  easily  refutable  out  of 
his  own  mouth.  His  philosophy  pretends,  if  anything,  to  give 
a better  insight  into  truth  than  rationalistic  philosophies  give: 
yet  what  is  it  in  itself  if  not  a conceptual  system  ? Does  its 
author  not  reason  by  concepts  exclusively  in  his  very  attempt 
to  show  that  they  can  give  no  insight  ? 

To  this  particular  objection,  at  any  rate,  it  is  easy  to  reply. 
In  using  concepts  of  his  own  to  discredit  the  theoretic  claims 
of  concepts  generally,  Bergson  does  not  contradict,  but  on  the 
contrary  emphatically  illustrates  his  own  view  of  their  practical 
role,  for  they  serve  in  his  hands  only  to  ‘orient’  us,  to  show  us 
to  what  quarter  we  must  'practically  turn  if  we  wish  to  gain 
that  completer  insight  into  reality  which  he  denies  that  they 
can  give.  He  directs  our  hopes  away  from  them  and  towards 
the  despised  sensible  flux.  What  he  reaches  by  their  means  is 
thus  only  a new  practical  attitude.  He  but  restores,  against 
the  vetoes  of  intellectualist  philosophy,  our  naturally  cordial 
relations  with  sensible  experience  and  common  sense.  This 
service  is  surely  only  practical ; but  it  is  a service  for  which  we 
may  be  almost  immeasurably  grateful.  To  trust  our  senses 
again  with  a good  philosophic  conscience ! — who  ever  con- 
ferred on  us  so  valuable  a freedom  before  ? 

By  making  certain  distinctions  and  additions  it  seems  easy 
to  meet  the  other  counts  of  the  indictment.  Concepts  are  reali- 

339 


NOTES 


ties  of  a new  order,  with  particular  relations  between  them. 
These  relations  are  just  as  much  directly  perceived,  when  we 
compare  our  various  concepts,  as  the  distance  between  two 
sense-objects  is  perceived  when  we  look  at  it.  Conception  is 
an  operation  which  gives  us  material  for  new  acts  of  percep- 
tion, then;  and  when  the  results  of  these  are  written  down, 
we  get  those  bodies  of  ‘mental  truth’  (as  Locke  called  it) 
known  as  mathematics,  logic,  and  a priori  metaphysics.  To 
know  all  this  truth  is  a theoretic  achievement,  indeed,  but  it 
is  a narrow  one ; for  the  relations  between  conceptual  objects 
as  such  are  only  the  static  ones  of  bare  comparison,  as  dif- 
ference or  sameness,  congruity  or  contradiction,  inclusion  or 
exclusion.  Nothing  happens  in  the  realm  of  concepts  ; rela- 
tions there  are  ‘eternal’  only.  The  theoretic  gain  fails  so 
far,  therefore,  to  touch  even  the  outer  hem  of  the  real  world, 
the  world  of  causal  and  dynamic  relations,  of  activity  and 
history.  To  gain  insight  into  all  that  moving  life,  Bergson 
is  right  in  turning  us  away  from  conception  and  towards 
perception. 

By  combining  concepts  with  percepts,  we  can  draw  maps  of 
the  distribution  of  other  percepts  in  distant  space  and  time.  To 
know  this  distribution  is  of  course  a theoretic  achievement, 
but  the  achievement  is  extremely  limited,  it  cannot  be  effected 
without  percepts,  and  even  then  what  it  yields  is  only  static 
relations.  From  maps  we  learn  positions  only,  and  the  po- 
sition of  a thing  is  but  the  slightest  kind  of  truth  about  it; 
but,  being  indispensable  for  forming  our  plans  of  action,  the 
conceptual  map-making  has  the  enormous  practical  impor- 
tance on  which  Bergson  so  rightly  insists. 

But  concepts,  it  will  be  said,  do  not  only  give  us  eternal 
truths  of  comparison  and  maps  of  the  positions  of  things,  they 
bring  new  values  into  life.  In  their  mapping  function  they 

340 


NOTES 


stand  to  perception  in  general  in  the  same  relation  in  which 
sight  and  hearing  stand  to  touch  — Spencer  calls  these  higher 
senses  only  organs  of  anticipatory  touch.  But  our  eyes  and 
ears  also  open  to  us  worlds  of  independent  glory:  music 
and  decorative  art  result,  and  an  incredible  enhancement 
of  life’s  value  follows.  Even  so  does  the  conceptual  world 
bring  new  ranges  of  value  and  of  motivation  to  our  life.  Its 
maps  not  only  serve  us  practically,  but  the  mere  mental 
possession  of  such  vast  pictures  is  of  itself  an  inspiring  good. 
New  interests  and  incitements,  and  feelings  of  power,  sub- 
limity, and  admiration  are  aroused. 

Abstractness  per  se  seems  to  have  a touch  of  ideality. 
Royce’s  ‘ loyalty  to  loyalty  ’ is  an  excellent  example.  ‘ Causes,  ’ 
as  anti-slavery,  democracy,  liberty,  etc.,  dwindle  when  realized 
in  their  sordid  particulars.  The  veritable  ‘ cash-value’  of  the 
idea  seems  to  cleave  to  it  only  in  the  abstract  status.  Truth 
at  large,  as  Royce  contends,  in  his  Philosophy  of  Loyalty, 
appears  another  thing  altogether  from  the  true  particulars 
in  which  it  is  best  to  believe.  It  transcends  in  value  all  those 
‘expediencies,’  and  is  something  to  live  for,  whether  expedient 
or  inexpedient.  Truth  with  a big  T is  a ‘momentous  issue’; 
truths  in  detail  are  ‘ poor  scraps,’  mere  ‘ crumbling  successes.’ 
(Op.  cit..  Lecture  VII,  especially  § v.) 

Is,  now,  such  bringing  into  existence  of  a new  value  to  be 
regarded  as  a theoretic  achievement  ? The  question  is  a nice 
one,  for  altho  a value  is  in  one  sense  an  objective  quality  per- 
ceived, the  essence  of  that  quality  is  its  relation  to  the  will,  and 
consists  in  its  being  a dynamogenic  spur  that  makes  our  action 
different.  So  far  as  their  value-creating  function  goes,  it  would 
thus  appear  that  concepts  connect  themselves  more  with  our 
active  than  with  our  theoretic  life,  so  here  again  Bergson’s 
formulation  seems  unobjectionable.  Persons  who  have  certain 

341 


NOTES 


concepts  are  animated  otherwise,  pursue  their  own  vital 
careers  differently.  It  does  n’t  necessarily  follow  that  they 
understand  other  vital  careers  more  intimately. 

Again  it  may  be  said  that  we  combine  old  concepts  into  new 
ones,  conceiving  thus  such  realities  as  the  ether,  God,  souls, 
or  what  not,  of  which  our  sensible  life  alone  would  leave  us 
altogether  ignorant.  This  surely  is  an  increase  of  our  know- 
ledge, and  may  well  be  called  a theoretical  achievement.  Yet 
here  again  Bergson’s  criticisms  hold  good.  Much  as  concep- 
tion may  tell  us  about  such  invisible  objects,  it  sheds  no  ray  of 
light  into  their  interior.  The  completer,  indeed,  our  defini- 
tions of  ether-waves,  atoms,  Gods,  or  souls  become,  the  less 
instead  of  the  more  intelligible  do  they  appear  to  us.  The 
learned  in  such  things  are  consequently  beginning  more  and 
more  to  ascribe  a solely  instrumental  value  to  our  concepts 
of  them.  Ether  and  molecules  may  be  like  co-ordinates  and 
averages,  only  so  many  crutches  by  the  help  of  which  we 
practically  perform  the  operation  of  getting  about  among 
our  sensible  experiences. 

We  see  from  these  considerations  how  easily  the  question  of 
whether  the  function  of  concepts  is  theoretical  or  practical 
may  grow  into  a logomachy.  It  may  be  better  from  this  point 
of  view  to  refuse  to  recognize  the  alternative  as  a sharp  one. 
The  sole  thing  that  is  certain  in  the  midst  of  it  all  is  that  Berg- 
son is  absolutely  right  in  contending  that  the  whole  life  of 
activity  and  change  is  inwardly  impenetrable  to  conceptual 
treatment,  and  that  it  opens  itself  only  to  sympathetic  appre- 
hension at  the  hands  of  immediate  feeling.  All  the  whats  as 
well  as  the  thats  of  reality,  relational  as  well  as  terminal,  are  in 
the  end  contents  of  immediate  concrete  perception.  Yet  the  re- 
moter unperceived  arrangements,  temporal,  spatial,  and  logical, 
of  these  contents,  are  also  something  that  we  need  to  know  as 

342 


NOTES 


well  for  the  pleasure  of  the  knowing  as  for  the  practical  help. 
We  may  call  this  need  of  arrangement  a theoretic  need  or  a 
practical  need,  according  as  we  choose  to  lay  the  emphasis ; but 
Bergson  is  accurately  right  when  he  limits  conceptual  know- 
ledge to  arrangement,  and  when  he  insists  that  arrangement 
is  the  mere  skirt  and  skin  of  the  whole  of  what  we  ought  to 
know. 

Note  2,  page  266.  — Gaston  Rageot,  Revue  Philosophique, 
vol.  lxiv,  p.  85  (July,  1907). 

Note  3,  page  268.  — I have  myself  talked  in  other  ways  as 
plausibly  as  I could,  in  my  Psychology,  and  talked  truly  (as 
I believe)  in  certain  selected  cases;  but  for  other  cases  the 
natural  way  invincibly  comes  back. 

LECTURE  VII 

Note  1,  page  278.  — Introduction  to  Hume,  1874,  p.  151. 

Note  2,  page  279.  — Ibid.,  pp.  16,  21,  36,  et  passim. 

Note  3,  page  279.  — See,  inter  alia,  the  chapter  on  the 
‘Stream  of  Thought’  in  my  own  Psychologies;  H.  Cornelius, 
Psychologie,  1897,  chaps,  i and  iii;  G.  H.  Luquet,  Idees  Gene- 
rales  de  Psychologie,  1906,  passim. 

Note  4,  page  280.  — Compare,  as  to  all  this,  an  article  by 
the  present  writer,  entitled  ‘A  world  of  pure  experience,’  in 
the  Journal  of  Philosophy,  New  York,  vol.  i,  pp.  533,  561 
(1905). 

Note  5,  page  280.  — Green’s  attempt  to  discredit  sensations 
by  reminding  us  of  their  ‘dumbness,’  in  that  they  do  not  come 
already  named,  as  concepts  may  be  said  to  do,  only  shows 
how  intellectualism  is  dominated  by  verbality.  The  unnamed 
appears  in  Green  as  synonymous  with  the  unreal. 

Note  6,  page  283.  — Philosophy  of  Reflection,  i,  248  ff. 

343 


NOTES 


Note  7,  page  284.  — Most  of  this  paragraph  is  extracted 
from  an  address  of  mine  before  the  American  Psychological 
Association,  printed  in  the  Psychological  Review,  vol.  ii, 
p.  105.  I take  pleasure  in  the  fact  that  already  in  1895  I 
was  so  far  advanced  towards  my  present  bergsonian  position. 

Note  8,  page  289.  — The  conscious  self  of  the  moment,  the 
central  self,  is  probably  determined  to  this  privileged  position 
by  its  functional  connexion  with  the  body’s  imminent  or  pre- 
sent acts.  It  is  the  present  acting  self.  Tho  the  more  that  sur- 
rounds it  may  be  ‘subconscious’  to  us,  yet  if  in  its  ‘collective 
capacity’  it  also  exerts  an  active  function,  it  may  be  conscious 
in  a wider  way,  conscious,  as  it  were,  over  our  heads. 

On  the  relations  of  consciousness  to  action  see  Bergson’s 
M atiere  et  Memoire,  passim,  especially  chap.  i.  Compare  also 
the  hints  in  Miinsterberg’s  Grundziige  der  Psychologie,  chap, 
xv ; those  in  my  own  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  ii,  pp.  581- 
592 ; and  those  in  W.  McDougall’s  Physiological  Psychology, 
chap.  vii. 

Note  9,  page  295.  — Compare  Zend-Avesta,  2d  edition,  vol. 
i,  pp.  165  ff.,  181,  206,  244  ff.,  etc.;  Die  Tagesansicht,  etc., 
chap,  v,  § 6;  and  chap.  xv. 

LECTURE  VIII 

Note  1,  page  330.  — Blondel : Annales  de  Philosophic  Chre- 
tienne,  June,  1906,  p.  241. 


APPENDICES 


APPENDIX  A 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS1 

Experience  in  its  immediacy  seems  perfectly  fluent. 
The  active  sense  of  living  which  we  all  enjoy,  before 
reflection  shatters  our  instinctive  world  for  us,  is  self- 
luminous  and  suggests  no  paradoxes.  Its  difficulties 
are  disappointments  and  uncertainties.  They  are  not 
intellectual  contradictions. 

When  the  reflective  intellect  gets  at  work,  however,  it 
discovers  incomprehensibilities  in  the  flowing  process. 
Distinguishing  its  elements  and  parts,  it  gives  them 
separate  names,  and  what  it  thus  disjoins  it  cannot 
easily  put  together.  Pyrrhonism  accepts  the  irrationality 
and  revels  in  its  dialectic  elaboration.  Other  philoso- 
phies try,  some  by  ignoring,  some  by  resisting,  and  some 
by  turning  the  dialectic  procedure  against  itself,  negat- 
ing its  first  negations,  to  restore  the  fluent  sense  of  life 
again,  and  let  redemption  take  the  place  of  innocence. 
The  perfection  with  which  any  philosophy  may  do  this 
is  the  measure  of  its  human  success  and  of  its  importance 
in  philosophic  history.  In  an  article  entitled  ‘A  world 
of  pure  experience,’ 2 1 tried  my  own  hand  sketchily  at 

1 Reprinted  from  the  Journal  of  Philosophy , Psychology , and 
Scientific  Methods,  vol.  ii.  New  York,  1905,  with  slight  verbal  revision. 

2 Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods,  vol.  i, 
No.  20,  p.  566. 


S47 


APPENDIX  A 


the  problem,  resisting  certain  first  steps  of  dialectics  by 
insisting  in  a general  way  that  the  immediately  expe- 
rienced conjunctive  relations  are  as  real  as  anything  else. 
If  my  sketch  is  not  to  appear  too  naif,  I must  come 
closer  to  details,  and  in  the  present  essay  I propose  to 
do  so. 

i 

‘Pure  experience’  is  the  name  which  I gave  to  the 
immediate  flux  of  life  which  furnishes  the  material  to 
our  later  reflection  with  its  conceptual  categories.  Only 
new-born  babes,  or  men  in  semi-coma  from  sleep,  drugs, 
illnesses,  or  blows,  may  be  assumed  to  have  an  experi- 
ence pure  in  the  literal  sense  of  a that  which  is  not  yet 
any  definite  what,  tho  ready  to  be  all  sorts  of  whats;  full 
both  of  oneness  and  of  manyness,  but  in  respects  that 
don’t  appear;  changing  throughout,  yet  so  confusedly 
that  its  phases  interpenetrate  and  no  points,  either  of 
distinction  or  of  identity,  can  be  caught.  Pure  experi- 
ence in  this  state  is  but  another  name  for  feeling  or 
sensation.  But  the  flux  of  it  no  sooner  comes  than  it 
tends  to  fill  itself  with  emphases,  and  these  salient  parts 
become  identified  and  fixed  and  abstracted;  so  that 
experience  now  flows  as  if  shot  through  with  adjec- 
tives and  nouns  and  prepositions  and  conjunctions. 
Its  purity  is  only  a relative  term,  meaning  the  pro- 
portional amount  of  unverbalized  sensation  which  it  still 
embodies. 


348 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 


Far  back  as  we  go,  the  flux,  both  as  a whole  and  in  its 
parts,  is  that  of  things  conjunct  and  separated.  The 
great  continua  of  time,  space,  and  the  self  envelop 
everything,  betwixt  them,  and  flow  together  without 
interfering.  The  things  that  they  envelop  come  as 
separate  in  some  ways  and  as  continuous  in  others. 
Some  sensations  coalesce  with  some  ideas,  and  others 
are  irreconcilable.  Qualities  compenetrate  one  space, 
or  exclude  each  other  from  it.  They  cling  together 
persistently  in  groups  that  move  as  units,  or  else  they 
separate.  Their  changes  are  abrupt  or  discontinuous; 
and  their  kinds  resemble  or  differ;  and,  as  they  do  so, 
they  fall  into  either  even  or  irregular  series. 

In  all  this  the  continuities  and  the  discontinuities 
are  absolutely  co-ordinate  matters  of  immediate  feeling. 
The  conjunctions  are  as  primordial  elements  of  ‘fact’ 
as  are  the  distinctions  and  disjunctions.  In  the  same 
act  by  which  I feel  that  this  passing  minute  is  a new 
pulse  of  my  life,  I feel  that  the  old  life  continues  into 
it,  and  the  feeling  of  continuance  in  no  wise  jars  upon 
the  simultaneous  feeling  of  a novelty.  They,  too,  com- 
penetrate harmoniously.  Prepositions,  copulas,  and 
conjunctions,  ‘is,’  ‘isn’t,’  ‘then,’  ‘before,’  ‘in,’  ‘on,’ 
‘beside,’  ‘between,’  ‘next,’  ‘like,’  ‘unlike,’  ‘as,’  ‘but,’ 
flower  out  of  the  stream  of  pure  experience,  the  stream 
of  concretes  or  the  sensational  stream,  as  naturally  as 
nouns  and  adjectives  do,  and  they  melt  into  it  again  as 

349 


APPENDIX  A 


fluidly  when  we  apply  them  to  a new  portion  of  the 
stream. 

ii 

If  now  we  ask  why  we  must  translate  experience  from 
a more  concrete  or  pure  into  a more  intellectualized 
form,  filling  it  with  ever  more  abounding  conceptual 
distinctions,  rationalism  and  naturalism  give  different 
replies. 

The  rationalistic  answer  is  that  the  theoretic  life  is 
absolute  and  its  interests  imperative;  that  to  understand 
is  simply  the  duty  of  man;  and  that  who  questions  this 
need  not  be  argued  with,  for  by  the  fact  of  arguing  he 
gives  away  his  case. 

The  naturalist  answer  is  that  the  environment  kills 
as  well  as  sustains  us,  and  that  the  tendency  of  raw 
experience  to  extinguish  the  experient  himself  is  lessened 
just  in  the  degree  in  which  the  elements  in  it  that  have  a 
practical  bearing  upon  life  are  analyzed  out  of  the  con- 
tinuum and  verbally  fixed  and  coupled  together,  so  that 
we  may  know  what  is  in  the  wind  for  us  and  get  ready 
to  react  in  time.  Had  pure  experience,  the  naturalist 
says,  been  always  perfectly  healthy,  there  would  never 
have  arisen  the  necessity  of  isolating  or  verbalizing  any 
of  its  terms.  We  should  just  have  experienced  inarticu- 
lately and  unintellectually  enjoyed.  This  leaning  on 
‘reaction’  in  the  naturalist  account  implies  that,  when- 
ever we  intellectualize  a relatively  pure  experience,  we 

350 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 


ought  to  do  so  for  the  sake  of  redescending  to  the  purer 
or  more  concrete  level  again;  and  that  if  an  intellect  stays 
aloft  among  its  abstract  terms  and  generalized  relations, 
and  does  not  reinsert  itself  with  its  conclusions  into 
some  particular  point  of  the  immediate  stream  of  life,  it 
fails  to  finish  out  its  function  and  leaves  its  normal  race 
unrun. 

Most  rationalists  nowadays  will  agree  that  natural- 
ism gives  a true  enough  account  of  the  way  in  which  our 
intellect  arose  at  first,  but  they  will  deny  these  latter 
implications.  The  case,  they  will  say,  resembles  that  of 
sexual  love.  Originating  in  the  animal  need  of  getting 
another  generation  born,  this  passion  has  developed 
secondarily  such  imperious  spiritual  needs  that,  if  you 
ask  why  another  generation  ought  to  be  born  at  all,  the 
answer  is:  ‘Chiefly  that  love  may  go  on.’  Just  so  with 
our  intellect : it  originated  as  a practical  means  of  serving 
life;  but  it  has  developed  incidentally  the  function  of 
understanding  absolute  truth;  and  life  itself  now  seems 
to  be  given  chiefly  as  a means  by  which  that  function 
may  be  prosecuted.  But  truth  and  the  understanding  of 
it  lie  among  the  abstracts  and  universals,  so  the  intellect 
now  carries  on  its  higher  business  wholly  in  this  region, 
without  any  need  of  redescending  into  pure  experience 
again. 

If  the  contrasted  tendencies  which  I thus  designate 
as  naturalistic  and  rationalistic  are  not  recognized  by 

351 


APPENDIX  A 


the  reader,  perhaps  an  example  will  make  them  more 
concrete.  Mr.  Bradley,  for  instance,  is  an  ultra-ration- 
alist. He  admits  that  our  intellect  is  primarily  practical, 
but  says  that,  for  philosophers,  the  practical  need  is 
simply  Truth.1  Truth,  moreover,  must  be  assumed 
‘consistent.’  Immediate  experience  has  to  be  broken 
into  subjects  and  qualities,  terms  and  relations,  to  be 
understood  as  truth  at  all.  Yet  when  so  broken  it  is  less 
consistent  than  ever.  Taken  raw,  it  is  all  undistinguished. 
Intellectualized,  it  is  all  distinction  without  oneness. 
‘Such  an  arrangement  may  work,  but  the  theoretic 
problem  is  not  solved’  (p.  23).  The  question  is,  * How 
the  diversity  can  exist  in  harmony  with  the  oneness’ 
(p.  118).  To  go  back  to  pure  experience  is  unavailing. 
‘Mere  feeling  gives  no  answer  to  our  riddle’  (p.  104). 
Even  if  your  intuition  is  a fact,  it  is  not  an  understanding. 
‘It  is  a mere  experience,  and  furnishes  no  consistent 
view’  (pp.  108-109).  The  experiences  offered  as  facts  or 
truths  ‘I  find  that  my  intellect  rejects  because  they  con- 
tradict themselves.  They  offer  a complex  of  diversities 
conjoined  in  a way  which  it  feels  is  not  its  way  and 
which  it  cannot  repeat  as  its  own.  . . . For  to  be  satis- 
fied, my  intellect  must  understand,  and  it  cannot  under- 
stand by  taking  a congeries  in  the  lump’  (p.  570).  So 
Mr.  Bradley,  in  the  sole  interests  of  ‘understanding’ 
(as  he  conceives  that  function),  turns  his  back  on  finite 

1 Appearance  and  Reality,  pp.  152-153. 

352 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

experience  forever.  Truth  must  lie  in  the  opposite  direc- 
tion, the  direction  of  the  absolute;  and  this  kind  of 
rationalism  and  naturalism,  or  (as  I will  now  call  it) 
pragmatism,  walk  thenceforward  upon  opposite  paths. 
For  the  one,  those  intellectual  products  are  most  true 
which,  turning  their  face  towards  the  absolute,  come 
nearest  to  symbolizing  its  ways  of  uniting  the  many  and 
the  one.  For  the  other,  those  are  most  true  which  most 
successfully  dip  back  into  the  finite  stream  of  feeling 
and  grow  most  easily  confluent  with  some  particular 
wave  or  wavelet.  Such  confluence  not  only  proves  the 
intellectual  operation  to  have  been  true  (as  an  addition 
may  ‘prove’  that  a subtraction  is  already  rightly  per- 
formed), but  it  constitutes,  according  to  pragmatism,  all 
that  we  mean  by  calling  it  true.  Only  in  so  far  as  they 
lead  us,  successfully  or  unsuccessfully,  into  sensible 
experience  again,  are  our  abstracts  and  universals  true 
or  false  at  all. 

hi 

In  Section  the  6th  of  my  article,  ‘A  world  of  pure 
experience,’  I adopted  in  a general  way  the  common- 
sense  belief  that  one  and  the  same  world  is  cognized  by 
our  different  minds;  but  I left  undiscussed  the  dialectical 
arguments  which  maintain  that  this  is  logically  absurd. 
The  usual  reason  given  for  its  being  absurd  is  that  it 
assumes  one  object  (to  wit,  the  world)  to  stand  in 

353 


APPENDIX  A 


two  relations  at  once;  to  my  mind,  namely,  and  again 
to  yours;  whereas  a term  taken  in  a second  relation 
cannot  logically  be  the  same  term  which  it  was  at 
first. 

I have  heard  this  reason  urged  so  often  in  discuss- 
ing with  absolutists,  and  it  would  destroy  my  radical 
empiricism  so  utterly,  if  it  were  valid,  that  I am  bound 
to  give  it  an  attentive  ear,  and  seriously  to  search  its 
strength. 

For  instance,  let  the  matter  in  dispute  be  a term  M, 
asserted  to  be  on  the  one  hand  related  to  L,  and  on  the 
other  to  N ; and  let  the  two  cases  of  relation  be  symbol- 
ized by  L — M and  M — N respectively.  When,  now, 
I assume  that  the  experience  may  immediately  come 
and  be  given  in  the  shape  L — M — N,  with  no  trace  of 
doubling  or  internal  fission  in  the  M,  I am  told  that  this 
is  alia  popular  delusion;  that  L — M — N logically 
means  two  different  experiences,  L — M and  M — N, 
namely;  and  that  although  the  absolute  may,  and  indeed 
must,  from  its  superior  point  of  view,  read  its  own  kind 
of  unity  into  M's  two  editions,  yet  as  elements  in  finite 
experience  the  two  M's  lie  irretrievably  asunder,  and 
the  world  between  them  is  broken  and  unbridged. 

In  arguing  this  dialectic  thesis,  one  must  avoid  slipping 
from  the  logical  into  the  physical  point  of  view.  It  would 
be  easy,  in  taking  a concrete  example  to  fix  one’s  ideas 
by,  to  choose  one  in  which  the  letter  M should  stand  for 

354 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 


a collective  noun  of  some  sort,  which  noun,  being  re- 
lated to  L by  one  of  its  parts  and  to  N by  another, 
would  inwardly  be  two  things  when  it  stood  outwardly 
in  both  relations.  Thus,  one  might  say:  ‘David  Hume, 
who  weighed  so  many  stone  by  his  body,  influences 
posterity  by  his  doctrine.’  The  body  and  the  doctrine 
are  two  things,  between  which  our  finite  minds  can  dis- 
cover no  real  sameness,  though  the  same  name  covers 
both  of  them.  And  then,  one  might  continue:  ‘Only 
an  absolute  is  capable  of  uniting  such  a non-identity.’ 
We  must,  I say,  avoid  this  sort  of  example;  for  the 
dialectic  insight,  if  true  at  all,  must  apply  to  terms  and 
relations  universally.  It  must  be  true  of  abstract  units 
as  well  as  of  nouns  collective;  and  if  we  prove  it  by 
concrete  examples,  we  must  take  the  simplest,  so  as  to 
avoid  irrelevant  material  suggestions. 

Taken  thus  in  all  its  generality,  the  absolutist  conten- 
tion seems  to  use  as  its  major  premise  Hume’s  notion 
‘that  all  our  distinct  perceptions  are  distinct  existences, 
and  that  the  mind  never  perceives  any  real  connexion 
among  distinct  existences.’  Undoubtedly,  since  we  use 
two  phrases  in  talking  first  about  ‘IT’s  relation  to  L’ 
and  then  again  about  ‘M’s  relation  to  N,’  we  must  be 
having,  or  must  have  had,  two  distinct  perceptions  ; — 
and  the  rest  would  then  seem  to  follow  duly.  But  the 
starting-point  of  the  reasoning  here  seems  to  be  the 
fact  of  the  two  'phrases;  and  this  suggests  that  the 

3 55 


APPENDIX  A 


argument  may  be  merely  verbal.  Can  it  be  that  the 
whole  dialectic  achievement  consists  in  attributing  to 
the  experience  talked-about  a constitution  similar  to 
that  of  the  language  in  which  we  describe  it  ? Must 
we  assert  the  objective  doubleness  of  the  M merely 
because  we  have  to  name  it  twice  over  when  we 
name  its  two  relations  ? 

Candidly,  I can  think  of  no  other  reason  than  this  for 
the  dialectic  conclusion! 1 for,  if  we  think,  not  of  our 
words,  but  of  any  simple  concrete  matter  which  they 
may  be  held  to  signify,  the  experience  itself  belies  the 
paradox  asserted.  We  use  indeed  two  separate  concepts 
in  analyzing  our  object,  but  we  know  them  all  the  while 
to  be  but  substitutional,  and  that  the  M in  L — M and 
the  M in  M — N mean  (i.  e.,  are  capable  of  leading  to 
and  terminating  in)  one  self-same  piece,  M,  of  sensible 
experience.  This  persistent  identity  of  certain  units,  or 
emphases,  or  points,  or  objects,  or  members  — call 
them  what  you  will  — of  the  experience-continuum,  is 
just  one  of  those  conjunctive  features  of  it,  on  which 
I am  obliged  to  insist  so  emphatically.  For  samenesses 
are  parts  of  experience’s  indefeasible  structure.  When 
I hear  a bell-stroke  and,  as  life  flows  on,  its  after- 
image dies  away,  I still  hark  back  to  it  as  ‘that  same 

1 Technically,  it  seems  classable  as  a ‘fallacy  of  composition.’  A 
duality,  predicable  of  the  two  wholes,  L — M and  M — N,  is  forth- 
with predicated  of  one  of  their  parts,  M. 

356 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

bell-stroke.’  When  I see  a thing  M,  with  L to  the  left 
of  it  and  N to  the  right  of  it,  I see  it  as  one  M ; and  if 
you  tell  me  I have  had  to  ‘ take  ’ it  twice,  I reply  that  if  I 
‘took’  it  a thousand  times,  I should  still  see  it  as  a unit.1 
Its  unity  is  aboriginal,  just  as  the  multiplicity  of  my 
successive  takings  is  aboriginal.  It  comes  unbroken 
9,s  that  M,  as  a singular  which  I encounter;  they  come 
broken,  as  those  takings,  as  my  plurality  of  operations. 
The  unity  and  the  separateness  are  strictly  co-ordinate. 
I do  not  easily  fathom  why  my  opponents  should  find 
the  separateness  so  much  more  easily  understandable 
that  they  must  needs  infect  the  whole  of  finite  experi- 
ence with  it,  and  relegate  the  unity  (now  taken  as  a bare 
postulate  and  no  longer  as  a thing  positively  perceivable) 
to  the  region  of  the  absolute’s  mysteries.  I do  not  easily 
fathom  this,  I say,  for  the  said  opponents  are  above 
mere  verbal  quibbling;  yet  all  that  I can  catch  in  their 
talk  is  the  substitution  of  what  is  true  of  certain  words 
for  what  is  true  of  what  they  signify.  They  stay  with 
the  words,  — not  returning  to  the  stream  of  life  whence 
all  the  meaning  of  them  came,  and  which  is  always  ready 
to  reabsorb  them. 

1 I may  perhaps  refer  here  to  my  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  i, 
pp.  459  ff . It  really  seems  ‘ weird  ’ to  have  to  argue  (as  I am  forced  now 
to  do)  for  the  notion  that  it  is  one  sheet  of  paper  (with  its  two  surfaces 
and  all  that  lies  between)  which  is  both  under  my  pen  and  on  the 
table  while  I write  — the  ‘claim’  that  it  is  two  sheets  seems  so  brazen. 
Yet  I sometimes  suspect  the  absolutists  of  sincerity ! 

357 


APPENDIX  A 


IV 

For  aught  this  argument  proves,  then,  we  may  con- 
tinue to  believe  that  one  thing  can  be  known  by  many 
knowers.  But  the  denial  of  one  thing  in  many  relations 
is  but  one  application  of  a still  profounder  dialectic 
difficulty.  Man  can’t  be  good,  said  the  sophists,  for  man 
is  man  and  good  is  good;  and  Hegel  and  Herbart  in  their 
day,  more  recently  H.  Spir,  and  most  recently  and 
elaborately  of  all,  Mr.  Bradley,  inform  us  that  a term 
can  logically  only  be  a punctiform  unit,  and  that  not 
one  of  the  conjunctive  relations  between  things,  which 
experience  seems  to  yield,  is  rationally  possible. 

Of  course,  if  true,  this  cuts  off  radical  empiricism 
without  even  a shilling.  Radical  empiricism  takes  con- 
junctive relations  at  their  face-value,  holding  them  to  be 
as  real  as  the  terms  united  by  them.  The  world  it  re- 
presents as  a collection,  some  parts  of  which  are  con- 
junctively and  others  disjunctively  related.  Two  parts, 
themselves  disjoined,  may  nevertheless  hang  together 
by  intermediaries  with  which  they  are  severally  con- 
nected, and  the  whole  world  eventually  may  hang  to- 
gether similarly,  inasmuch  as  some  path  of  conjunctive 
transition  by  which  to  pass  from  one  of  its  parts  to 
another  may  always  be  discernible.  Such  determinately 
various  hanging-together  may  be  called  concatenated 
union,  to  distinguish  it  from  the  ‘ through-and-through  ’ 
type  of  union,  ‘each  in  all  and  all  in  each’  (union  of 

358 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 


total  conflux,  as  one  might  call  it),  which  monistic  sys- 
tems hold  to  obtain  when  things  are  taken  in  their  ab- 
solute reality.  In  a concatenated  world  a partial  conflux 
often  is  experienced.  Our  concepts  and  our  sensations 
are  confluent;  successive  states  of  the  same  ego,  and 
feelings  of  the  same  body  are  confluent.  Where  the  ex- 
perience is  not  of  conflux,  it  may  be  of  conterminousness 
(things  with  but  one  thing  between) ; or  of  contiguous- 
ness (nothing  between) ; or  of  likeness ; or  of  nearness ; 
«r  of  simultaneousness ; or  of  in-ness ; or  of  on-ness ; 
or  of  for-ness ; or  of  simple  with-ness ; or  even  of  mere 
and-ness,  which  last  relation  would  make  of  however 
disjointed  a world  otherwise,  at  any  rate  for  that 
occasion  a universe  ‘of  discourse.’  Now  Mr.  Brad- 
ley tells  us  that  none  of  these  relations,  as  we  actually 
experience  them,  can  possibly  be  real.1  My  next  duty, 
accordingly,  must  be  to  rescue  radical  empiricism 
from  Mr.  Bradley.  Fortunately,  as  it  seems  to  me,  his 
general  contention,  that  the  very  notion  of  relation  is 

1 Here  again  the  reader  must  beware  of  slipping  from  logical  into 
phenomenal  considerations.  It  may  well  be  that  we  attribute  a certain 
relation  falsely,  because  the  circumstances  of  the  case,  being  complex, 
have  deceived  us.  At  a railway  station  we  may  take  our  own  train,  and 
not  the  one  that  fills  our  window,  to  be  moving.  We  here  put  motion 
in  the  wrong  place  in  the  world,  but  in  its  original  place  the  motion  is 
a part  of  reality.  What  Mr.  Bradley  means  is  nothing  like  this,  but 
rather  that  such  things  as  motion  are  nowhere  real,  and  that,  even  in 
their  aboriginal  and  empirically  incorrigible  seats,  relations  are  impos- 
sible of  comprehension. 


359 


APPENDIX  A 


unthinkable  clearly,  has  been  successfully  met  by  many 
critics.1 

It  is  a burden  to  the  flesh,  and  an  injustice  both  to 
readers  and  to  the  previous  writers,  to  repeat  good  argu- 
ments already  printed.  So,  in  noticing  Mr.  Bradley,  I 
will  confine  myself  to  the  interests  of  radical  empiricism 
solely. 

v 

The  first  duty  of  radical  empiricism,  taking  given 
conjunctions  at  their  face-value,  is  to  class  some  of  them 
as  more  intimate  and  some  as  more  external.  When  two 
terms  are  similar,  their  very  natures  enter  into  the  rela- 
tion. Being  what  they  are,  no  matter  where  or  when, 
the  likeness  never  can  be  denied,  if  asserted.  It  con- 
tinues predicable  as  long  as  the  terms  continue.  Other 
relations,  the  where  and  the  when,  for  example,  seem 
adventitious.  The  sheet  of  paper  may  be  ‘off’  or  ‘on’ 
the  table,  for  example;  and  in  either  case  the  relation 
involves  only  the  outside  of  its  terms.  Having  an  outside, 
both  of  them,  they  contribute  by  it  to  the  relation.  It  is 
external : the  term’s  inner  nature  is  irrelevant  to  it.  Any 

1 Particularly  so  by  Andrew  Seth  Pringle-Pattison,  in  his  Man  and 
the  Cosmos;  by  L.  T.  Hobhouse,  in  chapter  xii  (the  Validity  of 
Judgment)  of  his  Theory  of  Knowledge;  and  by  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  in 
his  Humanism,  Essay  XI.  Other  fatal  reviews  (in  my  opinion)  are 
Hodder’s,  in  the  Psychological  Review,  vol.  i,  307;  Stout’s,  in  the 
Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian  Society,  1901-02,  p.  1;  and  MacLen- 
nan’s,  in  the  Journal  of  Philosophy,  etc.,  vol.  i,  403. 

360 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 


book,  any  table,  may  fall  into  the  relation,  which  is 
created  pro  hac  vice,  not  by  their  existence,  but  by  their 
casual  situation.  It  is  just  because  so  many  of  the  con- 
junctions of  experience  seem  so  external  that  a philoso- 
phy of  pure  experience  must  tend  to  pluralism  in  its 
ontology.  So  far  as  things  have  space-relations,  for  ex- 
ample, we  are  free  to  imagine  them  with  different  origins 
even.  If  they  could  get  to  be,  and  get  into  space  at  all, 
then  they  may  have  done  so  separately.  Once  there, 
however,  they  are  additives  to  one  another,  and,  with 
no  prejudice  to  their  natures,  all  sorts  of  space-relations 
may  supervene  between  them.  The  question  of  how 
things  could  come  to  be,  anyhow,  is  wholly  different 
from  the  question  what  their  relations,  once  the  being 
accomplished,  may  consist  in. 

Mr.  Bradley  now  affirms  that  such  external  relations 
as  the  space-relations  which  we  here  talk  of  must  hold 
of  entirely  different  subjects  from  those  of  which  the  ab- 
sence of  such  relations  might  a moment  previously  have 
been  plausibly  asserted.  Not  only  is  the  situation  differ- 
ent when  the  book  is  on  the  table,  but  the  book  itself  is 
different  as  a book,  from  what  it  was  when  it  was  off 
the  table.1  He  admits  that  ‘such  external  relations 

1 Once  more,  don’t  slip  from  logical  into  physical  situations.  Of 
course,  if  the  table  be  wet,  it  will  moisten  the  book,  or  if  it  be  slight 
enough  and  the  book  heavy  enough,  the  book  will  break  it  down.  But 
such  collateral  phenomena  are  not  the  point  at  issue.  The  point  is 
whether  the  successive  relations  ‘ on  ’ and  ‘ not-on  ’ can  rationally  (not 

361 


APPENDIX  A 


seem  possible  and  even  existing.  . . . That  you  do  not 
alter  what  you  compare  or  rearrange  in  space  seems 
to  common  sense  quite  obvious,  and  that  on  the  other 
side  there  are  as  obvious  difficulties  does  not  occur  to 
common  sense  at  all.  And  I will  begin  by  pointing 
out  these  difficulties.  . . . There  is  a relation  in  the 
result,  and  this  relation,  we  hear,  is  to  make  no  difference 
in  its  terms.  But,  if  so,  to  what  does  it  make  a difference  ? 
\does  n't  it  make  a difference  to  us  onlookers,  at  least  ?] 
and  what  is  the  meaning  and  sense  of  qualifying  the 
terms  by  it  ? [Surely  the  meaning  is  to  tell  the  truth  about 
their  relative  position.1]  If,  in  short,  it  is  external  to  the 
terms,  how  can  it  possibly  be  true  of  them  ? [Zs  it  the 
‘ intimacy'  suggested  by  the  little  word  ‘of,’  here,  which 
I have  underscored,  that  is  the  root  of  Mr.  Bradley  s 
trouble  ?]  . . . If  the  terms  from  their  inner  nature  do 
not  enter  into  the  relation,  then,  so  far  as  they  are  con- 
cerned, they  seem  related  for  no  reason  at  all.  . . . 
Things  are  spatially  related,  first  in  one  way,  and  then 
become  related  in  another  way,  and  yet  in  no  way  them- 

physically)  hold  of  the  same  constant  terms,  abstractly  taken.  Profes- 
sor A.  E.  Taylor  drops  from  logical  into  material  considerations  when 
he  instances  color-contrast  as  a proof  that  A,  ‘as  contra-distinguished 
from  B,  is  not  the  same  thing  as  mere  A not  in  any  way  affected’ 
( Elements  of  Metaphysics,  1903,  p.  145).  Note  the  substitution,  for 
‘related,’  of  the  word  ‘affected,’  which  begs  the  whole  question. 

1 But  ‘is  there  any  sense,’  asks  Mr.  Bradley,  peevishly,  on  p.  579, 
‘and  if  so,  what  sense,  in  truth  that  is  only  outside  and  “about ’’things?1 
Surely  such  a question  may  be  left  unanswered. 

3G2 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

selves  are  altered;  for  the  relations,  it  is  said,  are  but 
external.  But  I reply  that,  if  so,  I cannot  understand 
the  leaving  by  the  terms  of  one  set  of  relations  and  their 
adoption  of  another  fresh  set.  The  process  and  its  result 
to  the  terms,  if  they  contribute  nothing  to  it  [surely  they 
contribute  to  it  all  there  is  ‘of  ' it!]  seem  irrational 
throughout.  [If  ‘ irrational  ’ here  means  simply  ' non- 
rational,'  or  non-deducible  from  the  essence  of  either  term 
singly,  it  is  no  reproach;  if  it  means  ‘ contradicting ' such 
essence,  Mr.  Bradley  should  show  wherein  and  how.]  But, 
if  they  contribute  anything,  they  must  surely  be  affected 
internally.  [Why  so,  if  they  contribute  only  their  surface  ? 
In  such  relations  as  ‘ on ,'  * a foot  away ,'  ‘between,'  ‘next,’ 
etc.,  only  surfaces  are  in  question.]  . . . If  the  terms  con- 
tribute anything  whatever,  then  the  terms  are  affected 
[inwardly  altered  ?]  by  the  arrangement.  . . . That  for 
working  purposes  we  treat,  and  do  well  to  treat,  some 
relations  as  external  merely,  I do  not  deny,  and  that  of 
course  is  not  the  question  at  issue  here.  That  question 
is  . . . whether  in  the  end  and  in  principle  a mere  ex- 
ternal relation  [i.  e.,  a relation  which  can  change  without 
forcing  its  terms  to  change  their  nature  simultaneously] 
is  possible  and  forced  on  us  by  the  facts.’ 1 

Mr.  Bradley  next  reverts  to  the  antinomies  of  space, 
which,  according  to  him,  prove  it  to  be  unreal,  although 
it  appears  as  so  prolific  a medium  of  external  relations ; 

1 Appearance  and  Reality,  2d  edition,  pp.  575-576. 

363 


APPENDIX  A 


and  he  then  concludes  that  ‘Irrationality  and  exter- 
nality cannot  be  the  last  truth  about  things.  Somewhere 
there  must  be  a reason  why  this  and  that  appear  together. 
And  this  reason  and  reality  must  reside  in  the  whole 
from  which  terms  and  relations  are  abstractions,  a whole 
in  which  their  internal  connexion  must  lie,  and  out  of 
which  from  the  background  appear  those  fresh  results 
which  never  could  have  come  from  the  premises  ’ (p.  577). 
And  he  adds  that  ‘Where  the  whole  is  different,  the 
terms  that  qualify  and  contribute  to  it  must  so  far  be 
different.  . . . They  are  altered  so  far  only  [how  far  ? 
farther  than  externally,  yet  not  through  and  through?], 
but  still  they  are  altered.  ...  I must  insist  that  in  each 
case  the  terms  are  qualified  by  their  whole  [qualified 
how  ? — do  their  external  relations,  situations,  dates,  etc., 
changed  as  these  are  in  the  new  whole,  fail  to  qualify  them 
far  ’ enough  ?],  and  that  in  the  second  case  there  is  a 
whole  which  differs  both  logically  and  psychologically 
from  the  first  whole ; and  I urge  that  in  contributing  to 
the  change  the  terms  so  far  are  altered’  (p.  579). 

Not  merely  the  relations,  then,  but  the  terms  are  al- 
tered : und  zwar  ‘so  far.’  But  just  how  far  is  the  whole 
problem;  and  ‘through-and-through’  would  seem  (in 
spite  of  Mr.  Bradley’s  somewhat  undecided  utterances  *) 

1 I say  ‘undecided,’  because,  apart  from  the  ‘so  far,’  which  sounds 
terribly  half-hearted,  there  are  passages  in  these  very  pages  in  which 
Mr.  Bradley  admits  the  pluralistic  thesis.  Read,  for  example,  what  he 
says,  on  p.  578,  of  a billiard  ball  keeping  its  ‘character’  unchanged, 

364 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 


to  be  the  full  bradleyan  answer.  The  ‘ whole  ’ which  he 
here  treats  as  primary  and  determinative  of  each  part’s 
manner  of  ‘contributing,’  simply  must,  when  it  alters, 
alter  in  its  entirety.  There  must  be  total  conflux  of  its 
parts,  each  into  and  through  each  other.  The  ‘must’ 
appears  here  as  a Machtspruch,  as  an  ipse  dixit  of  Mr. 
Bradley’s  absolutistically  tempered  ‘understanding,’ 
for  he  candidly  confesses  that  how  the  parts  do  differ 
as  they  contribute  to  different  wholes,  is  unknown  to  him 
(p.  578). 

Although  I have  every  wish  to  comprehend  the  au- 
thority by  which  Mr.  Bradley’s  understanding  speaks, 
his  words  leave  me  wholly  unconverted.  ‘External 
relations’  stand  with  their  withers  all  unwrung,  and 

though,  in  its  change  of  place,  its  ‘existence’  gets  altered;  or  what  he 
says,  on  p.  579,  of  the  possibility  that  an  abstract  quality  A,  B,  or  C,  in 
a thing,  ‘may  throughout  remain  unchanged’  although  the  thing  be 
altered ; or  his  admission  that  in  red-hairedness,  both  as  analyzed  out 
of  a man  and  when  given  with  the  rest  of  him,  there  may  be  ‘ no  change' 
(p.  580).  Why  does  he  immediately  add  that  for  the  pluralist  to  plead 
the  non-mutation  of  such  abstractions  would  be  an  ignoratio  elenchi  ? 
It  is  impossible  to  admit  it  to  be  such.  The  entire  elenchus  and  in- 
quest is  just  as  to  whether  parts  which  you  can  abstract  from  existing 
wholes  can  also  contribute  to  other  wholes  without  changing  their 
inner  nature.  If  they  can  thus  mould  various  wholes  into  new  gestalt- 
qualitaten,  then  it  follows  that  the  same  elements  are  logically  able 
to  exist  in  different  wholes  [whether  physically  able  would  depend 
on  additional  hypotheses];  that  partial  changes  are  thinkable,  and 
through-and-through  change  not  a dialectic  necessity;  that  monism 
is  only  an  hypothesis;  and  that  an  additively  constituted  universe 
is  a rationally  respectable  hypothesis  also.  All  the  theses  of  radical 
empiricism,  in  short,  follow. 


365 


APPENDIX  A 


remain,  for  aught  he  proves  to  the  contrary,  not  only 
practically  workable,  but  also  perfectly  intelligible 
factors  of  reality 

VI 

Mr.  Bradley’s  understanding  shows  the  most  extraor- 
dinary power  of  perceiving  separations  and  the  most 
extraordinary  impotence  in  comprehending  conjunc- 
tions. One  would  naturally  say  ‘neither  or  both,’  but  not 
so  Mr.  Bradley.  When  a common  man  analyzes  cer- 
tain whats  from  out  the  stream  of  experience,  he  under- 
stands their  distinctness  as  thus  isolated.  But  this  does 
not  prevent  him  from  equally  well  understanding  their 
combination  with  each  other  as  originally  experienced 
in  the  concrete,  or  their  confluence  with  new  sensible 
experiences  in  which  they  recur  as  ‘the  same.’  Return- 
ing into  the  stream  of  sensible  presentation,  nouns  and 
adjectives,  and  thats  and  abstract  whats,  grow  confluent 
again,  and  the  word  ‘is’  names  all  these  experiences  of 
conjunction.  Mr.  Bradley  understands  the  isolation  of 
the  abstracts,  but  to  understand  the  combination  is  to 
him  impossible.1  ‘To  understand  a complex  AB,'  he 

1 So  far  as  I catch  his  state  of  mind,  it  is  somewhat  like  this : ‘ Book,’ 
‘table,’  ‘on’  — how  does  the  existence  of  these  three  abstract  elements 
result  in  this  book  being  livingly  on  this  table  P Why  is  n’t  the  table 
on  the  book?  Or  why  doesn’t  the  ‘on’  connect  itself  with  another 
book,  or  something  that  is  not  a table  ? Must  n’t  something  in  each  of 
the  three  elements  already  determine  the  two  others  to  it,  so  that  they 
do  not  settle  elsewhere  or  float  vaguely  ? Must  n’t  the  whole  {ad  be 

366 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 


says,  ‘I  must  begin  with  A or  B.  And  beginning,  say 
with  A,  if  I then  merely  find  B,  I have  either  lost  A, 
or  I have  got  beside  A,  [ the  word  ‘ beside  ’ seems  here 
vital,  as  meaning  a conjunction  ‘ external  ’ and  therefore 
unintelligible ] something  else,  and  in  neither  case  have 
I understood.1  For  my  intellect  cannot  simply  unite  a 
diversity,  nor  has  it  in  itself  any  form  or  way  of  together- 
ness, and  you  gain  nothing  if,  beside  A and  B,  you  offer 
me  their  conjunction  in  fact.  For  to  my  intellect  that 
is  no  more  than  another  external  element.  And  “ facts,” 
once  for  all,  are  for  my  intellect  not  true  unless  they 
satisfy  it.  . . . The  intellect  has  in  its  nature  no 
principle  of  mere  togetherness’  (pp.  570,  572). 

Of  course  Mr.  Bradley  has  a right  to  define  ‘intellect  ’ 
as  the  power  by  which  we  perceive  separations  but  not 
unions  — provided  he  give  due  notice  to  the  reader. 
But  why  then  claim  that  such  a maimed  and  amputated 
power  must  reign  supreme  in  philosophy,  and  accuse  on 
its  behoof  the  whole  empirical  world  of  irrationality  ? 
It  is  true  that  he  elsewhere  (p.  568)  attributes  to  the 
intellect  a proprius  motus  of  transition,  but  says  that 

prefigured  in  each  part,  and  exist  de  jure  before  it  can  exist  de  facto  ? 
But,  if  so,  in  what  can  the  jural  existence  consist,  if  not  in  a spiritual 
miniature  of  the  whole  fact’s  constitution  actuating  every  partial  factor 
as  its  purpose  ? But  is  this  anything  but  the  old  metaphysical  fallacy 
of  looking  behind  a fact  in  esse  for  the  ground  of  the  fact,  and  finding 
it  in  the  shape  of  the  very  same  fact  in  posse  ? Somewhere  we  must 
leave  off  with  a constitution  behind  which  there  is  nothing. 

1 Apply  this  to  the  case  of  ‘ book-on-table ’ 1 W.  J. 

367 


APPENDIX  A 


when  he  looks  for  these  transitions  in  the  detail  of  liv- 
ing experience,  he  ‘is  unable  to  verify  such  a solution’ 
(p.  569). 

Yet  he  never  explains  what  the  intellectual  transitions 
would  be  like  in  case  we  had  them.  He  only  defines 
them  negatively  — they  are  not  spatial,  temporal, 
predicative,  or  causal;  or  qualitatively  or  otherwise 
serial ; or  in  any  way  relational  as  we  naively  trace  rela- 
tions, for  relations  separate  terms,  and  need  themselves 
to  be  hooked  on  ad  infinitum.  The  nearest  approach 
he  makes  to  describing  a truly  intellectual  transition  is 
where  he  speaks  of  A and  B as  being  ‘united,  each  from 
its  own  nature,  in  a whole  which  is  the  nature  of  both 
alike’  (p.  570).  But  this  (which,  pace  Mr.  Bradley, 
seems  exquisitely  analogous  to  ‘taking  a congeries  in  a 
lump,’  if  not  to  ‘swamping’)  suggests  nothing  but  that 
conflux  which  pure  experience  so  abundantly  offers,  as 
when  ‘space,’  ‘white,’  and  ‘sweet’  are  confluent  in  a 
‘lump  of  sugar,’  or  kinesthetic,  dermal,  and  optical  sen- 
sations confluent  in  ‘my  hand.’  1 All  that  I can  verify 
in  the  transitions  which  Mr.  Bradley’s  intellect  desider- 
ates as  its  proprius  motus  is  a reminiscence  of  these  and 
other  sensible  conjunctions  (especially  space-conjunc- 

1 How  meaningless  is  the  contention  that  in  such  wholes  (or  in  ‘ book- 
on-table,’  ‘ watch-in-pocket,’  etc.)  the  relation  is  an  additional  entity 
between  the  terms,  needing  itself  to  be  related  again  to  each ! Both 
Bradley  (Appearance  and  Reality,  pp.  32-33)  and  Royce  (The  World 
and  the  Individual,  i,  128)  lovingly  repeat  this  piece  of  profundity. 

368 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 


tions),  but  a reminiscence  so  vague  that  its  originals  are 
not  recognized.  Bradley,  in  short,  repeats  the  fable  of 
the  dog,  the  bone,  and  its  image  in  the  water.  With  a 
world  of  particulars,  given  in  loveliest  union,  in  con- 
junction definitely  various,  and  variously  definite,  the 
‘how’  of  which  you  ‘understand ’ as  soon  as  you  see  the 
fact  of  them,1  for  there  is  no  how  except  the  constitution 
of  the  fact  as  given ; with  all  this  given  him,  I say,  in  pure 
experience,  he  asks  for  some  ineffable  union  in  the  ab- 
stract instead,  which,  if  he  gained  it,  would  only  be  a 
duplicate  of  what  he  has  already  in  his  full  possession. 
Surely  he  abuses  the  privilege  which  society  grants  to 
all  of  us  philosophers,  of  being  puzzle-headed. 

Polemic  wTriting  like  this  is  odious ; but  with  absolut- 
ism in  possession  in  so  many  quarters,  omission  to  defend 
my  radical  empiricism  against  its  best  known  cham- 
pion would  count  as  either  superficiality  or  inability. 
I have  to  conclude  that  its  dialectic  has  not  invalidated 
in  the  least  degree  the  usual  conjunctions  by  wdfich  the 
world,  as  experienced,  hangs  so  variously  together.  In 
particular  it  leaves  an  empirical  theory  of  knowledge  in- 
tact, and  lets  us  continue  to  believe  with  common  sense 
that  one  object  may  be  known,  if  we  have  any  ground 
for  thinking  that  it  is  known,  to  many  knowers. 

1 The  ‘why’  and  the  ‘whence’  are  entirely  other  questions,  not 
under  discussion,  as  I understand  Mr.  Bradley.  Not  how  experience 
gets  itself  born,  but  how  it  can  be  what  it  is  after  it  is  born,  is  the  puzzle. 


369 


APPENDIX  B 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY1 

. . . Mr.  Bradley  calls  the  question  of  activity  a 
scandal  to  philosophy,  and  if  one  turns  to  the  current 
literature  of  the  subject  — his  own  writings  included 
— one  easily  gathers  what  he  means.  The  opponents 
cannot  even  understand  one  another.  Mr.  Bradley  says 
to  Mr.  Ward : ‘I  do  not  care  what  your  oracle  is,  and 
your  preposterous  psychology  may  here  be  gospel  if  you 
please;  . . . but  if  the  revelation  does  contain  a mean- 
ing, I will  commit  myself  to  this : either  the  oracle  is 
so  confused  that  its  signification  is  not  discoverable,  or, 
upon  the  other  hand,  if  it  can  be  pinned  down  to  any 
definite  statement,  then  that  statement  will  be  false.’  2 
Mr.  Ward  in  turn  says  of  Mr.  Bradley : ‘ I cannot  even 
imagine  the  state  of  mind  to  which  his  description 
applies.  ...  It  reads  like  an  unintentional  travesty 
of  Herbartian  Psychology  by  one  who  has  tried  to  im- 
prove upon  it  without  being  at  the  pains  to  master  it.’ 
Miinsterberg  excludes  a view  opposed  to  his  own  by 
saying  that  with  any  one  who  holds  it  a verstandigung 
with  him  is  ‘ grundsdtzlich  ausgeschlossen’ ; and  Royce, 

1 President’s  Address  before  the  American  Psychological  Associa- 
tion, December,  1901.  Reprinted  from  the  Psychological  Review,  \ ol. 
xii,  1905,  with  slight  verbal  revision. 

J Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  117.  Obviously  written  at  Ward, 
though  Ward’s  name  is  not  mentioned. 

370 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 


in  a review  of  Stout,1  hauls  him  over  the  coals  at  great 
length  for  defending  ‘ efficacy  ’ in  a way  which  I,  for  one, 
never  gathered  from  reading  him,  and  which  I have 
heard  Stout  himself  say  was  quite  foreign  to  the  inten- 
tion of  his  text. 

In  these  discussions  distinct  questions  are  habitually 
jumbled  and  different  points  of  view  are  talked  of 
durcheinander. 

(1)  There  is  a psychological  question:  Have  we 
perceptions  of  activity  ? and  if  so,  what  are  they  like, 
and  when  and  where  do  we  have  them  ? 

(2)  There  is  a metaphysical  question : Is  there  a 
fact  of  activity  ? and  if  so,  what  idea  must  we  frame 
of  it  ? What  is  it  like  ? and  what  does  it  do,  if  it 
does  anything  ? And  finally  there  is  a logical  question : 

(3)  Whence  do  we  know  activity  ? By  our  own  feel- 
ings of  it  solely  ? or  by  some  other  source  of  informa- 
tion ? Throughout  page  after  page  of  the  literature 
one  knows  not  which  of  these  questions  is  before  one ; 
and  mere  description  of  the  surface-show  of  experience 
is  proffered  as  if  it  implicitly  answered  every  one  of 
them.  No  one  of  the  disputants,  moreover,  tries  to  show 
what  pragmatic  consequences  his  own  view  would  carry, 
or  what  assignable  particular  differences  in  any  one’s 
experience  it  would  make  if  his  adversary’s  were  tri- 
umphant. 

1 Mind,  n.  s.,  VI,  379. 

371 


APPENDIX  B 


It  seems  to  me  that  if  radical  empiricism  be  good  for 
anything,  it  ought,  with  its  pragmatic  method  and  its 
principle  of  pure  experience,  to  be  able  to  avoid  such 
tangles,  or  at  least  to  simplify  them  somewhat.  The 
pragmatic  method  starts  from  the  postulate  that  there 
is  no  difference  of  truth  that  does  n’t  make  a difference 
of  fact  somewhere ; and  it  seeks  to  determine  the  meaning 
of  all  differences  of  opinion  by  making  the  discussion 
hinge  as  soon  as  possible  upon  some  practical  or  par- 
ticular issue.  The  principle  of  pure  experience  is  also 
a methodical  postulate.  Nothing  shall  be  admitted  as 
fact,  it  says,  except  what  can  be  experienced  at  some 
definite  time  by  some  experient ; and  for  every  feature 
of  fact  ever  so  experienced,  a definite  place  must  be 
found  somewhere  in  the  final  system  of  reality.  In 
other  words : Everything  real  must  be  experienceable 
somewhere,  and  every  kind  of  thing  experienced  must 
somewhere  be  real. 

Armed  with  these  rules  of  method,  let  us  see  what 
face  the  problems  of  activity  present  to  us. 

By  the  principle  of  pure  experience,  either  the  word 
‘activity  ’must  have  no  meaning  at  all,  or  else  the  original 
type  and  model  of  what  it  means  must  lie  in  some  con- 
crete kind  of  experience  that  can  be  definitely  pointed 
out.  Whatever  ulterior  judgments  we  may  eventually 
come  to  make  regarding  activity,  that  sort  of  thing  will 
be  what  the  judgments  are  about.  The  first  step  to 

372 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 


take,  then,  is  to  ask  where  in  the  stream  of  experience 
we  seem  to  find  what  we  speak  of  as  activity.  What 
we  are  to  think  of  the  activity  thus  found  will  be  a later 
question. 

Now  it  is  obvious  that  we  are  tempted  to  affirm 
activity  wherever  we  find  anything  going  on.  Taken  in 
the  broadest  sense,  any  apprehension  of  something  doing, 
is  an  experience  of  activity.  Were  our  world  describ- 
able  only  by  the  words  ‘nothing  happening,’  ‘nothing 
changing,’  ‘ nothing  doing,’  we  should  unquestion- 
ably call  it  an  ‘inactive’  world.  Bare  activity,  then,  as 
we  may  call  it,  means  the  bare  fact  of  event  or  change. 
‘ Change  taking  place  ’ is  a unique  content  of  experience, 
one  of  those  ‘conjunctive’  objects  which  radical  empir- 
icism seeks  so  earnestly  to  rehabilitate  and  preserve. 
The  sense  of  activity  is  thus  in  the  broadest  and  vaguest 
way  synonymous  with  the  sense  of  ‘life.’  We  should 
feel  our  own  subjective  life  at  least,  even  in  noticing 
and  proclaiming  an  otherwise  inactive  world.  Our  own 
reaction  on  its  monotony  would  be  the  one  thing  expe- 
rienced there  in  the  form  of  something  coming  to  pass. 

This  seems  to  be  what  certain  writers  have  in  mind 
when  they  insist  that  for  an  experient  to  be  at  all  is  to  be 
active.  It  seems  to  justify,  or  at  any  rate  to  explain,  Mr. 
Ward’s  expression  that  we  are  only  as  we  are  active,1 

1 Naturalism  and  Agnosticism.,  vol.  ii,  p.  245.  One  thinks  naturally 
of  the  peripatetic  actus  primus  and  actus  secundus  here. 

373 


APPENDIX  B 


for  we  are  only  as  experients ; and  it  rules  out  Mr.  Brad- 
ley’s contention  that  ‘there  is  no  original  experience  of 
anything  like  activity.’  What  we  ought  to  say  about 
activities  thus  simply  given,  whose  they  are,  what  they 
effect,  or  whether  indeed  they  effect  anything  at  all  — 
these  are  later  questions,  to  be  answered  only  when  the 
field  of  experience  is  enlarged. 

Bare  activity  would  thus  be  predicable,  though 
there  were  no  definite  direction,  no  actor,  and  no  aim. 
Mere  restless  zigzag  movement,  or  a wild  ideenflucht, 
or  rhapsodie  der  wahrnehmungen,  as  Kant  would  say, 
would  constitute  an  active  as  distinguished  from  an 
inactive  world. 

But  in  this  actual  world  of  ours,  as  it  is  given,  a part 
at  least  of  the  activity  comes  with  definite  direction ; it 
comes  with  desire  and  sense  of  goal ; it  comes  complicated 
with  resistances  which  it  overcomes  or  succumbs  to,  and 
with  the  efforts  which  the  feeling  of  resistance  so  often 
provokes;  and  it  is  in  complex  experiences  like  these 
that  the  notions  of  distinct  agents,  and  of  passivity  as 
opposed  to  activity  arise.  Here  also  the  notion  of  causal 
efficacy  comes  to  birth.  Perhaps  the  most  elaborate 
work  ever  done  in  descriptive  psychology  has  been  the 
analysis  by  various  recent  writers  of  the  more  complex 
activity-situations.  In  their  descriptions,  exquisitely 
subtle  some  of  them,1  the  activity  appears  as  the  gestalt- 

1 Their  existence  forms  a curious  commentary  on  Professor 

374 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 


qualitat  or  the  fundirte  inhalt  (or  as  whatever  else  you 
may  please  to  call  the  conjunctive  form)  which  the  con- 
tent falls  into  when  we  experience  it  in  the  ways  which 
the  describers  set  forth.  Those  factors  in  those  relations 
are  what  we  mean  by  activity-situations ; and  to  the  pos- 
sible enumeration  and  accumulation  of  their  circum- 
stances and  ingredients  there  would  seem  to  be  no  nat- 
ural bound.  Every  hour  of  human  life  could  contribute 
to  the  picture  gallery;  and  this  is  the  only  fault  that 
one  can  find  with  such  descriptive  industry  — where  is 
it  going  to  stop  ? Ought  we  to  listen  forever  to  verbal 
pictures  of  what  we  have  already  in  concrete  form  in 
our  own  breasts  ? 1 They  never  take  us  off  the  super- 
ficial plane.  We  knew  the  facts  already  — less  spread 
out  and  separated,  to  be  sure  — but  we  knew  them  still. 
We  always  felt  our  own  activity,  for  example,  as  ‘the 
expansion  of  an  idea  with  which  our  Self  is  identified, 
against  an  obstacle’;  and  the  following  out  of  such  a 
definition  through  a multitude  of  cases  elaborates  the 
obvious  so  as  to  be  little  more  than  an  exercise  in  syno- 
nymic speech. 

All  the  descriptions  have  to  trace  familiar  outlines, 
and  to  use  familiar  terms.  The  activity  is,  for  example, 

Miinsterberg's  dogma  that  will-attitudes  are  not  describable.  He  him- 
self has  contributed  in  a superior  way  to  their  description,  both  in  his 
Willenshandlung,  and  in  his  Grundzilge , Part  II,  chap,  ix,  § 7. 

1 I ought  myself  to  cry  peccavi,  having  been  a voluminous  sinner 
in  my  own  chapter  on  the  will. 

375 


APPENDIX  B 


attributed  either  to  a physical  or  to  a mental  agent, 
and  is  either  aimless  or  directed.  If  directed,  it  shows 
tendency.  The  tendency  may  or  may  not  be  resisted. 
If  not,  we  call  the  activity  immanent,  as  when  a body 
moves  in  empty  space  by  its  momentum,  or  our  thoughts 
wander  at  their  own  sweet  will.  If  resistance  is  met, 
its  agent  complicates  the  situation.  If  now,  in  spite  of 
resistance,  the  original  tendency  continues,  effort  makes 
its  appearance,  and  along  with  effort,  strain  or  squeeze. 
Will,  in  the  narrower  sense  of  the  word,  then  comes  upon 
the  scene,  whenever,  along  with  the  tendency,  the  strain 
and  squeeze  are  sustained.  But  the  resistance  may  be 
great  enough  to  check  the  tendency,  or  even  to  reverse 
its  path.  In  that  case,  we  (if  ‘we’  were  the  original 
agents  or  subjects  of  the  tendency)  are  overpowered. 
The  phenomenon  turns  into  one  of  tension  simply,  or 
of  necessity  succumbed-to,  according  as  the  opposing 
power  is  only  equal,  or  is  superior  to  ourselves. 

Whosoever  describes  an  experience  in  such  terms  as 
these,  describes  an  experience  of  activity.  If  the  word 
have  any  meaning,  it  must  denote  what  there  is  found. 
There  is  complete  activity  in  its  original  and  first  in- 
tention. What  it  is  ‘known-as’  is  what  there  appears. 
The  experiencer  of  such  a situation  possesses  all  that 
the  idea  contains.  He  feels  the  tendency,  the  obstacle, 
the  will,  the  strain,  the  triumph,  or  the  passive  giving 

up,  just  as  he  feels  the  time,  the  space,  the  swiftness  or 

376 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 


intensity,  the  movement,  the  weight  and  color,  the  pain 
and  pleasure,  the  complexity,  or  whatever  remaining 
characters  the  situation  may  involve.  He  goes  through 
all  that  ever  can  be  imagined  where  activity  is  supposed. 
If  we  suppose  activities  to  go  on  outside  of  our  expe- 
rience, it  is  in  forms  like  these  that  we  must  suppose 
them,  or  else  give  them  some  other  name ; for  the  word 
‘activity’  has  no  imaginable  content  whatever  save 
these  experiences  of  process,  obstruction,  striving,  strain, 
or  release,  ultimate  qualia  as  they  are  of  the  life  given 
us  to  be  known. 

Were  this  the  end  of  the  matter,  one  might  think  that 
whenever  we  had  successfully  lived  through  an  activity- 
situation  we  should  have  to  be  permitted,  without  pro- 
voking contradiction,  to  say  that  we  had  been  really 
active,  that  we  had  met  real  resistance  and  had  really 
prevailed.  Lotze  somewhere  says  that  to  be  an  entity  all 
that  is  necessary  is  to  gelten  as  an  entity,  to  operate,  or 
be  felt,  experienced,  recognized,  or  in  any  way  realized, 
as  such.  In  our  activity-experiences  the  activity  as- 
suredly fulfils  Lotze’s  demand.  It  makes  itself  gelten. 
It  is  witnessed  at  its  work.  No  matter  what  activities 
there  may  really  be  in  this  extraordinary  universe  of 
ours,  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  conceive  of  any  one  of 
them  being  either  lived  through  or  authentically  known 
otherwise  than  in  this  dramatic  shape  of  something  sus- 
taining a felt  purpose  against  felt  obstacles  and  over* 

377 


APPENDIX  B 


coming  or  being  overcome.  What  ‘sustaining’  means 
here  is  clear  to  any  one  who  has  lived  through  the 
experience,  but  to  no  one  else;  just  as  ‘loud,’  ‘red,’ 
‘sweet,’  mean  something  only  to  beings  with  ears,  eyes, 
and  tongues.  The  percipi  in  these  originals  of  experi- 
ence is  the  esse;  the  curtain  is  the  picture.  If  there  is 
anything  hiding  in  the  background,  it  ought  not  to  be 
called  activity,  but  should  get  itself  another  name. 

This  seems  so  obviously  true  that  one  might  well 
experience  astonishment  at  finding  so  many  of  the  ablest 
writers  on  the  subject  flatly  denying  that  the  activity 
we  live  through  in  these  situations  is  real.  Merely  to 
feel  active  is  not  to  be  active,  in  their  sight.  The  agents 
that  appear  in  the  experience  are  not  real  agents,  the 
resistances  do  not  really  resist,  the  effects  that  appear  are 
not  really  effects  at  all.1  It  is  evident  from  this  that 

1 Verborum  gratiA  : ‘The  feeling  of  activity  is  not  able,  qua,  feeling, 
to  tell  us  anything  about  activity  ’ (Loveday:  Mind,  n.  s.,  X.,  463); 
‘A  sensation  or  feeling  or  sense  of  activity  ...  is  not,  looked  at  in 
another  way,  a feeling  of  activity  at  all.  It  is  a mere  sensation  shut  up 
within  which  you  could  by  no  reflection  get  the  idea  of  activity.  . . . 
Whether  this  experience  is  or  is  not  later  on  a character  essential  to 
our  perception  and  our  idea  of  activity,  it,  as  it  comes  first,  is  not  in 
itself  an  experience  of  activity  at  all.  It,  as  it  comes  first,  is  only  so 
for  extraneous  reasons  and  only  so  for  an  outside  observer’  (Bradley, 
Appearance  and  Reality,  2d  edition,  p.  605);  ‘In  dem  tatigkeitsge- 
fiihle  leigt  an  sich  nicht  der  geringste  beweis  fiir  das  vorhandensein 
einer  psychischen  tatigkeit’  (Miinsterberg;  Grundzilge,  etc.,  p.  67). 
I could  multiply  similar  quotations,  and  would  have  introduced  some 
of  them  into  my  text  to  make  it  more  concrete,  save  that  the  mingling 

378 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

mere  descriptive  analysis  of  any  one  of  our  activity- 
experiences  is  not  the  whole  story,  that  there  is  some- 

of  different  points  of  view  in  most  of  these  author’s  discussions  (not  in 
Miinsterberg’s)  make  it  impossible  to  disentangle  exactly  what  they 
mean.  I am  sure  in  any  case  to  be  accused  of  misrepresenting  them 
totally,  even  in  this  note,  by  omission  of  the  context,  so  the  less  I name 
names  and  the  more  I stick  to  abstract  characterization  of  a merely 
possible  style  of  opinion,  the  safer  it  will  be.  And  apropos  of  misun- 
derstandings, I may  add  to  this  note  a complaint  on  my  own  account. 
Professor  Stout,  in  the  excellent  chapter  on  ‘Mental  Activity,’  in  vol.  i 
of  his  Analytic  Psychology , takes  me  to  task  for  identifying  spiritual 
activity  with  certain  muscular  feelings,  and  gives  quotations  to  bear 
him  out.  They  are  from  certain  paragraphs  on  ‘the  Self,’  in  which  my 
attempt  was  to  show  what  the  central  nucleus  of  the  activities  that  we 
call  ‘ours’  is.  I found  it  in  certain  intracephalic  movements  which  we 
habitually  oppose,  as  ‘subjective,’  to  the  activities  of  the  transcorporeal 
world.  I sought  to  show  that  there  is  no  direct  evidence  that  we  feel 
the  activity  of  an  inner  spiritual  agent  as  such  (I  should  now  say  the 
activity  of  ‘consciousness’  as  such,  see  my  paper  ‘Does  consciousness 
exist  ? ’ in  the  Journal  o / Philosophy,  vol.  i,  p.  477).  There  are,  in  fact, 
three  distinguishable  ‘ activities  ’ in  the  field  of  discussion : the  elemen- 
tary activity  involved  in  the  mere  that  of  experience,  in  the  fact  that 
something  is  going  on,  and  the  farther  specification  of  this  something 
into  two  whats,  an  activity  felt  as  ‘ours,’  and  an  activity  ascribed  to 
objects.  Stout,  as  I apprehend  him,  identifies  ‘our’  activity  with  that 
of  the  total  experience-process,  and  when  I circumscribe  it  as  a part 
thereof,  accuses  me  of  treating  it  as  a sort  of  external  appendage  to 
itself  (pp.  162-163),  as  if  I ‘separated  the  activity  from  the  process 
which  is  active.’  But  all  the  processes  in  question  are  active,  and  their 
activity  is  inseparable  from  their  being.  My  book  raised  only  the 
question  of  which  activity  deserved  the  name  of  ‘ours.’  So  far  as  we  are 
‘ persons,’  and  contrasted  and  opposed  to  an  ‘environment,’  movements 
in  our  body  figure  as  our  activities;  and  I am  unable  to  find  any  other 
activities  that  are  ours  in  this  strictly  personal  sense.  There  is  a wider 
sense  in  which  the  whole  ‘choir  of  heaven  and  furniture  of  the  earth,’ 

379 


APPENDIX  B 


thing  still  to  tell  about  them  that  has  led  such  able 
writers  to  conceive  of  a Simon-pure  activity,  of  an  ac- 
tivity an  sich,  that  does,  and  does  n’t  merely  appear  to 

and  their  activities,  are  ours,  for  they  are  our  ‘objects.’  But  ‘we’  are 
here  only  another  name  for  the  total  process  of  experience,  another 
name  for  all  that  is,  in  fact;  and  I was  dealing  with  the  personal  and 
individualized  self  exclusively  in  the  passages  with  which  Professor 
Stout  finds  fault. 

The  individualized  self,  which  I believe  to  be  the  only  thing  properly 
called  self,  is  a part  of  the  content  of  the  world  experienced.  The 
world  experienced  (otherwise  called  the  ‘field  of  consciousness’)  comes 
at  all  times  with  our  body  as  its  centre,  centre  of  vision,  centre  of 
action,  centre  of  interest.  Where  the  body  is  is  ‘here’;  when  the  body 
acts  is  ‘now’;  what  the  body  touches  is  ‘this’;  all  other  things  are 
‘there’  and ‘then’  and  ‘that.’  These  words  of  emphasized  position 
imply  a systematization  of  things  with  reference  to  a focus  of  action 
and  interest  which  lies  in  the  body ; and  the  systematization  is  now 
so  instinctive  (was  it  ever  not  so?)  that  no  developed  or  active  expe- 
rience exists  for  us  at  all  except  in  that  ordered  form.  So  far  as 
‘thoughts’  and  ‘feelings’  can  be  active,  their  activity  terminates  in 
the  activity  of  the  body,  and  only  through  first  arousing  its  activities 
can  they  begin  to  change  those  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  The  body 
is  the  storm  centre,  the  origin  of  co-ordinates,  the  constant  place  of 
stress  in  all  that  experience-train.  Everything  circles  round  it,  and 
is  felt  from  its  point  of  view.  The  word  ‘I,’  then,  is  primarily  a 
noun  of  position,  just  like  ‘this’  and  ‘here.’  Activities  attached  to 
‘this’  position  have  prerogative  emphasis,  and,  if  activities  have 
feelings,  must  be  felt  in  a peculiar  way.  The  word  ‘my’  designates 
the  kind  of  emphasis.  I see  no  inconsistency  whatever  in  defending, 
on  the  one  hand,  ‘ my  ’ activities  as  unique  and  opposed  to  those  of 
outer  nature,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  in  affirming,  after  introspec- 
tion, that  they  consist  in  movements  in  the  head.  The  ‘my’  of  them 
is  the  emphasis,  the  feeling  of  perspective-interest  in  which  they  are 
dyed. 


380 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 


us  to  do,  and  compared  with  whose  real  doing  all  this 
phenomenal  activity  is  but  a specious  sham. 

The  metaphysical  question  opens  here;  and  I think 
that  the  state  of  mind  of  one  possessed  by  it  is  often 
something  like  this : ‘It  is  all  very  well,’  we  may  imagine 
him  saying,  ‘to  talk  about  certain  experience-series 
taking  on  the  form  of  feelings  of  activity,  just  as  they 
might  take  on  musical  or  geometric  forms.  Suppose 
that  they  do  so ; suppose  that  what  we  feel  is  a will  to 
stand  a strain.  Does  our  feeling  do  more  than  record 
the  fact  that  the  strain  is  sustained  ? The  real  activity, 
meanwhile,  is  the  doing  of  the  fact ; and  what  is  the 
doing  made  of  before  the  record  is  made  ? What  in  the 
will  enables  it  to  act  thus  ? And  these  trains  of  experi- 
ence themselves,  in  which  activities  appear,  what  makes 
them  go  at  all  ? Does  the  activity  in  one  bit  of  experience 
bring  the  next  bit  into  being?  As  an  empiricist  you 
cannot  say  so,  for  you  have  just  declared  activity  to  be 
only  a kind  of  synthetic  object,  or  conjunctive  relation 
experienced  between  bits  of  experience  already  made. 
But  what  made  them  at  all  ? What  propels  experience 
uberhaupt  into  being  ? There  is  the  activity  that  op- 
erates ; the  activity  felt  is  only  its  superficial  sign.’ 

To  the  metaphysical  question,  popped  upon  us  in  this 
way,  I must  pay  serious  attention  ere  I end  my  remarks, 
but,  before  doing  so,  let  me  show  that  without  leaving 
the  immediate  reticulations  of  experience,  or  asking 

381 


APPENDIX  B 


what  makes  activity  itself  act,  we  still  find  the  distinction 
between  less  real  and  more  real  activities  forced  upon 
us,  and  are  driven  to  much  soul-searching  on  the  purely 
phenomenal  plane. 

We  must  not  forget,  namely,  in  talking  of  the  ultimate 
character  of  our  activity-experiences,  that  each  of  them 
is  but  a portion  of  a wider  world,  one  link  in  the  vast 
chain  of  processes  of  experience  out  of  which  history  is 
made.  Each  partial  process,  to  him  who  lives  through 
it,  defines  itself  by  its  origin  and  its  goal;  but  to  an 
observer  with  a wider  mind-span  who  should  live  out- 
side of  it,  that  goal  would  appear  but  as  a provisional 
halting-place,  and  the  subjectively  felt  activity  would 
be  seen  to  continue  into  objective  activities  that  led 
far  beyond.  We  thus  acquire  a habit,  in  discussing 
activity-experiences,  of  defining  them  by  their  relation 
to  something  more.  If  an  experience  be  one  of  narrow 
span,  it  will  be  mistaken  as  to  what  activity  it  is  and 
whose.  You  think  that  you  are  acting  while  you  are 
only  obeying  some  one’s  push.  You  think  you  are 
doing  this,  but  you  are  doing  something  of  which  you 
do  not  dream.  For  instance,  you  think  you  are  but 
drinking  this  glass;  but  you  are  really  creating  the 
liver-cirrhosis  that  will  end  your  days.  You  think  you 
are  just  driving  this  bargain,  but,  as  Stevenson  says 
somewhere,  you  are  laying  down  a link  in  the  policy 
of  mankind. 


382 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 


Generally  speaking,  the  onlooker,  -with  his  wider  field 
of  vision,  regards  the  ultimate  outcome  of  an  activity  as 
what  it  is  more  really  doing;  and  the  most  'previous 
agent  ascertainable,  being  the  first  source  of  action,  he 
regards  as  the  most  real  agent  in  the  field.  The  others 
but  transmit  that  agent’s  impulse;  on  him  we  put  re- 
sponsibility; we  name  him  when  one  asks  us,  ‘Who’s 
to  blame  ? ’ 

But  the  most  previous  agents  ascertainable,  instead 
of  being  of  longer  span,  are  often  of  much  shorter  span 
than  the  activity  in  view.  Brain-cells  are  our  best  ex- 
ample. My  brain-cells  are  believed  to  excite  each  other 
from  next  to  next  (by  contiguous  transmission  of  kata- 
bolic  alteration,  let  us  say),  and  to  have  been  doing  so 
long  before  this  present  stretch  of  lecturing-activity  on 
my  part  began.  If  any  one  cell-group  stops  its  activity, 
the  lecturing  will  cease  or  show  disorder  of  form.  Ces- 
sante  causa,  cessat  et  effectus  — does  not  this  look  as  if 
the  short-span  brain  activities  were  the  more  real  ac- 
tivities, and  the  lecturing  activities  on  my  part  only  their 
effects  ? Moreover,  as  Hume  so  clearly  pointed  out,  in 
my  mental  activity-situation  the  words  physically  to  be 
uttered  are  represented  as  the  activity’s  immediate  goal. 
These  words,  however,  cannot  be  uttered  without  inter- 
mediate physical  processes  in  the  bulb  and  vagi  nerves, 
which  processes  nevertheless  fail  to  figure  in  the  mental 
activity-series  at  all.  That  series,  therefore,  since  it 

383 


APPENDIX  B 


leaves  out  vitally  real  steps  of  action,  cannot  represent 
the  real  activities.  It  is  something  purely  subjective; 
the  facts  of  activity  are  elsewhere.  They  are  something 
far  more  interstitial,  so  to  speak,  than  what  my  feelings 
record. 

The  real  facts  of  activity  that  have  in  point  of  fact  been 
systematically  pleaded  for  by  philosophers  have,  so  far 
as  my  information  goes,  been  of  three  principal  types. 

The  first  type  takes  a consciousness  of  wider  time- 
span  than  ours  to  be  the  vehicle  of  the  more  real  activity. 
Its  will  is  the  agent,  and  its  purpose  is  the  action  done. 

The  second  type  assumes  that  ‘ ideas  ’ struggling  with 
one  another  are  the  agents,  and  that  the  prevalence  of 
one  set  of  them  is  the  action. 

The  third  type  believes  that  nerve-cells  are  the  agents, 
and  that  resultant  motor  discharges  are  the  acts  achieved. 

Now  if  we  must  de-realize  our  immediately  felt  ac- 
tivity-situations for  the  benefit  of  either  of  these  types 
of  substitute,  we  ought  to  know  what  the  substitution 
practically  involves.  What  practical  difference  ought  it 
to  make  if  instead  of  saying  naively  that  ‘I’  am  active 
now  in  delivering  this  address,  I say  that  a wider  thinker 
is  active,  or  that  certain  ideas  are  active,  or  that  certain 
nerve-cells  are  active,  in  producing  the  result  ? 

This  would  be  the  pragmatic  meaning  of  the  three 
hypotheses.  Let  us  take  them  in  succession  in  seeking 
a reply. 


384 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

If  we  assume  a wider  thinker,  it  is  evident  that  his 
purposes  envelop  mine.  I am  really  lecturing  for  him; 
and  altho  I cannot  surely  know  to  what  end,  yet  if  I 
take  him  religiously,  I can  trust  it  to  be  a good  end, 
and  willingly  connive.  I can  be  happy  in  thinking 
that  my  activity  transmits  his  impulse,  and  that  his 
ends  prolong  my  own.  So  long  as  I take  him  religiously, 
in  short,  he  does  not  de-realize  my  activities.  He  tends 
rather  to  corroborate  the  reality  of  them,  so  long  as  I 
believe  both  them  and  him  to  be  good. 

When  now  we  turn  to  ideas,  the  case  is  different,  in- 
asmuch as  ideas  are  supposed  by  the  association  psy- 
chology to  influence  each  other  only  from  next  to  next. 
The  ‘span’  of  an  idea,  or  pair  of  ideas,  is  assumed  to 
be  much  smaller  instead  of  being  larger  than  that  of  my 
total  conscious  field.  The  same  results  may  get  worked 
out  in  both  cases,  for  this  address  is  being  given  anyhow. 
But  the  ideas  supposed  to  ‘really’  work  it  out  had  no 
prevision  of  the  whole  of  it;  and  if  I was  lecturing  for 
an  absolute  thinker  in  the  former  case,  so,  by  similar 
reasoning,  are  my  ideas  now  lecturing  for  me,  that  is, 
accomplishing  unwittingly  a result  which  I approve 
and  adopt.  But,  when  this  passing  lecture  is  over,  there 
is  nothing  in  the  bare  notion  that  ideas  have  been  its 
agents  that  would  seem  to  guarantee  that  my  present 
purposes  in  lecturing  will  be  prolonged.  I may  have  ul- 
terior developments  in  view;  but  there  is  no  certainty 

385 


APPENDIX  B 


that  my  ideas  as  such  will  wish  to,  or  be  able  to,  work 
them  out. 

The  like  is  true  if  nerve-cells  be  the  agents.  The  ac- 
tivity of  a nerve-cell  must  be  conceived  of  as  a tendency 
of  exceedingly  short  reach,  an  ‘ impulse  ’ barely  spanning 
the  way  to  the  next  cell  — for  surely  that  amount  of 
actual  ‘process’  must  be  ‘experienced’  by  the  cells  if 
what  happens  between  them  is  to  deserve  the  name  of 
activity  at  all.  But  here  again  the  gross  resultant,  as 
I perceive  it,  is  indifferent  to  the  agents,  and  neither 
wished  or  willed  or  foreseen.  Their  being  agents  now 
congruous  with  my  will  gives  me  no  guarantee  that 
like  results  will  recur  again  from  their  activity.  In 
point  of  fact,  all  sorts  of  other  results  do  occur.  My 
mistakes,  impotencies,  perversions,  mental  obstructions, 
and  frustrations  generally,  are  also  results  of  the  activity 
of  cells.  Altho  these  are  letting  me  lecture  now,  on 
other  occasions  they  make  me  do  things  that  I would 
willingly  not  do. 

The  question  Whose  is  the  real  activity  ? is  thus  tan- 
tamount to  the  question  What  will  be  the  actual  results  ? 
Its  interest  is  dramatic ; how  will  things  work  out  ? If 
the  agents  are  of  one  sort,  one  way ; if  of  another  sort, 
they  may  work  out  very  differently.  The  pragmatic 
meaning  of  the  various  alternatives,  in  short,  is  great. 
It  makes  more  than  a merely  verbal  difference  which 
opinion  we  take  up. 


386 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 


You  see  it  is  the  old  dispute  come  back ! Materialism 
and  teleology;  elementary  short-span  actions  summing 
themselves  ‘blindly,’  or  far  foreseen  ideals  coming  with 
effort  into  act. 

Naively  we  believe,  and  humanly  and  dramatically 
we  like  to  believe,  that  activities  both  of  wader  and  of 
narrower  span  are  at  work  in  life  together,  that  both  are 
real,  and  that  the  long-span  tendencies  yoke  the  others 
in  their  service,  encouraging  them  in  the  right  direction, 
and  damping  them  when  they  tend  in  other  ways.  But 
how  to  represent  clearly  the  modus  operandi  of  such 
steering  of  small  tendencies  by  large  ones  is  a problem 
which  metaphysical  thinkers  will  have  to  ruminate 
upon  for  many  years  to  come.  Even  if  such  control 
should  eventually  grow  clearly  picturable,  the  question 
how  far  it  is  successfully  exerted  in  this  actual  world 
can  be  answered  only  by  investigating  the  details  of  fact. 
No  philosophic  knowledge  of  the  general  nature  and 
constitution  of  tendencies,  or  of  the  relation  of  larger 
to  smaller  ones,  can  help  us  to  predict  which  of  all  the 
various  competing  tendencies  that  interest  us  in  this 
universe  are  likeliest  to  prevail.  We  know  as  an  em- 
pirical fact  that  far-seeing  tendencies  often  carry  out  their 
purpose,  but  we  know  also  that  they  are  often  defeated 
by  the  failure  of  some  contemptibly  small  process  on 
which  success  depends.  A little  thrombus  in  a states- 
man’s meningeal  artery  will  throw  an  empire  out  of  gear. 

387 


APPENDIX  B 


Therefore  I cannot  even  hint  at  any  solution  of  the 
pragmatic  issue.  I have  only  wished  to  show  you  that 
that  issue  is  what  gives  the  real  interest  to  all  inquiries 
into  what  kinds  of  activity  may  be  real.  Are  the  forces 
that  really  act  in  the  world  more  foreseeing  or  more 
blind  ? As  between  ‘ our  ’ activities  as  ‘ we  ’ experience 
them,  and  those  of  our  ideas,  or  of  our  brain-cells, 
the  issue  is  well  defined. 

I said  awhile  back  (p.  381)  that  I should  return  to 
the  ‘ metaphysical  ’ question  before  ending ; so,  with  a 
few  words  about  that,  I will  now  close  my  remarks. 

In  whatever  form  we  hear  this  question  propounded, 
I think  that  it  always  arises  from  two  things,  a belief 
that  causality  must  be  exerted  in  activity,  and  a wonder 
as  to  how  causality  is  made.  If  we  take  an  activity-situ- 
ation at  its  face-value,  it  seems  as  if  we  caught  in  fla- 
grante delicto  the  very  power  that  makes  facts  come  and 
be.  I now  am  eagerly  striving,  for  example,  to  get  this 
truth  which  I seem  half  to  perceive,  into  words  which 
shall  make  it  show  more  clearly.  If  the  words  come,  it 
will  seem  as  if  the  striving  itself  had  drawn  or  pulled 
them  into  actuality  out  from  the  state  of  merely  possible 
being  in  which  they  were.  How  is  this  feat  performed  ? 
How  does  the  pulling  full  ? How  do  I get  my  hold  on 
words  not  yet  existent,  and  when  they  come,  by  what 
means  have  I made  them  come  ? Really  it  is  the  problem 

388 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 


of  creation ; for  in  the  end  the  question  is : How  do  I 
make  them  be  ? Real  activities  are  those  that  really 
make  things  be,  without  which  the  things  are  not,  and 
with  which  they  are  there.  Activity,  so  far  as  we  merely 
feel  it,  on  the  other  hand,  is  only  an  impression  of  ours, 
it  may  be  maintained ; and  an  impression  is,  for  all  this 
way  of  thinking,  only  a shadow  of  another  fact. 

Arrived  at  this  point,  I can  do  little  more  than  indicate 
the  principles  on  which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  a radically 
empirical  philosophy  is  obliged  to  rely  in  handling  such 
a dispute. 

If  there  be  real  creative  activities  in  being,  radical 
empiricism  must  say,  somewhere  they  must  be  immedi- 
ately lived.  Somewhere  the  that  of  efficacious  causing 
and  the  what  of  it  must  be  experienced  in  one,  just  as  the 
what  and  the  that  of  ‘cold’  are  experienced  in  one 
whenever  a man  has  the  sensation  of  cold  here  and  now. 
It  boots  not  to  say  that  our  sensations  are  fallible.  They 
are  indeed ; but  to  see  the  thermometer  contradict  us 
when  we  say  ‘ it  is  cold  ’ does  not  abolish  cold  as  a specific 
nature  from  the  universe.  Cold  is  in  the  arctic  circle  if 
not  here.  Even  so,  to  feel  that  our  train  is  moving  when 
the  train  beside  our  window  moves,  to  see  the  moon 
through  a telescope  come  twice  as  near,  or  to  see  two 
pictures  as  one  solid  when  we  look  through  a stereoscope 
at  them,  leaves  motion,  nearness,  and  solidity  still  in 
being  — if  not  here,  yet  each  in  its  proper  seat  else- 

389 


APPENDIX  B 


where.  And  wherever  the  seat  of  real  causality  is,  as 
ultimately  known  ‘for  true’  (in  nerve-processes,  if  you 
will,  that  cause  our  feelings  of  activity  as  well  as  the 
movements  which  these  seem  to  prompt),  a philosophy 
of  pure  experience  can  consider  the  real  causation  as  no 
other  nature  of  thing  than  that  which  even  in  our  most 
erroneous  experiences  appears  to  be  at  work.  Exactly 
what  appears  there  is  what  we  mean  by  working,  tho 
we  may  later  come  to  learn  that  working  was  not  ex- 
actly there.  Sustaining,  persevering,  striving,  paying 
with  effort  as  we  go,  hanging  on,  and  finally  achieving 
our  intention  — this  is  action,  this  is  effectuation  in 
the  only  shape  in  which,  by  a pure  experience-philoso- 
phy, the  whereabouts  of  it  anywhere  can  be  discussed. 
Here  is  creation  in  its  first  intention,  here  is  causality 
at  work.1  To  treat  this  offhand  as  the  bare  illusory 

1 Let  me  not  be  told  that  this  contradicts  a former  article  of  mine, 
‘Does  consciousness  exist?’  in  the  Journal  of  Philosophy  for  Septem- 
ber 1,  1904  (see  especially  page  489),  in  which  it  was  said  that  while 
‘thoughts’  and  ‘things’  have  the  same  natures,  the  natures  work 
‘energetically’  on  each  other  in  the  things  (fire  burns,  water  wets, 
etc.),  but  not  in  the  thoughts.  Mental  activity-trains  are  composed  of 
thoughts,  yet  their  members  do  work  on  each  other:  they  cheek,  sus- 
tain, and  introduce.  They  do  so  when  the  activity  is  merely  associa- 
tional  as  well  as  when  effort  is  there.  But,  and  this  is  my  reply,  they 
do  so  by  other  parts  of  their  nature  than  those  that  energize  physically. 
One  thought  in  every  developed  activity-series  is  a desire  or  thought 
of  purpose,  and  all  the  other  thoughts  acquire  a feeling  tone  from  their 
relation  of  harmony  or  oppugnancy  to  this.  The  interplay  of  these 
secondary  tones  (among  which  ‘interest,’  ‘difficulty,’  and  ‘effort’  fig- 

390 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 


surface  of  a world  whose  real  causality  is  an  unimagi- 
nable ontological  principle  hidden  in  the  cubic  deeps, 
is,  for  the  more  empirical  way  of  thinking,  only  ani- 
mism in  another  shape.  You  explain  your  given  fact  by 
your  ‘principle,’  but  the  principle  itself,  when  you  look 
clearly  at  it,  turns  out  to  be  nothing  but  a previous  little 
spiritual  copy  of  the  fact.  Away  from  that  one  and  only 
kind  of  fact  your  mind,  considering  causality,  can  never 
get.1 

ure)  runs  the  drama  in  the  mental  series.  In  what  we  term  the  physical 
drama  these  qualities  play  absolutely  no  part.  The  subject  needs 
careful  working  out;  but  I can  see  no  inconsistency. 

1 I have  found  myself  more  than  once  accused  in  print  of  being  the 
assertor  of  a metaphysical  principle  of  activity.  Since  literary  mis- 
understandings retard  the  settlement  of  problems,  I should  like  to  say 
that  such  an  interpretation  of  the  pages  I have  published  on  effort  and 
on  will  is  absolutely  foreign  to  what  I meant  to  express.  I owe  all  my 
doctrines  on  this  subject  to  Renouvier;  and  Renouvier,  as  I under- 
stand him,  is  (or  at  any  rate  then  was)  an  out  and  out  phenomenist, 
a denier  of  ‘forces’  in  the  most  strenuous  sense.  Single  clauses  in  my 
writing,  or  sentences  read  out  of  their  connexion,  may  possibly  have 
been  compatible  with  a transphenomenal  principle  of  energy;  but  I 
defy  any  one  to  show  a single  sentence  which,  taken  with  its  context, 
should  be  naturally  held  to  advocate  that  view.  The  misinterpretation 
probably  arose  at  first  from  my  having  defended  (after  Renouvier)  the 
indeterminism  of  our  efforts.  ‘ Free  will ’ was  supposed  by  my  critics  to 
involve  a supernatural  agent.  As  a matter  of  plain  history,  the  only  ‘ free 
will  ’ I have  ever  thought  of  defending  is  the  character  of  novelty  in  fresh 
activity-situations.  If  an  activity-process  is  the  form  of  a whole  ‘field 
of  consciousness,’  and  if  each  field  of  consciousness  is  not  only  in  its 
totality  unique  (as  is  now  commonly  admitted),  but  has  its  elements 
unique  (since  in  that  situation  they  are  all  dyed  in  the  total),  then 
novelty  is  perpetually  entering  the  world  and  what  happens  there  is 

391 


APPENDIX  B 


I conclude,  then,  that  real  effectual  causation  as  an 
ultimate  nature,  as  a ‘category,’  if  you  like,  of  reality, 
is  just  what  we  feel  it  to  be,  just  that  kind  of  conjunction 
which  our  own  activity-series  reveal.  We  have  the  whole 
butt  and  being  of  it  in  our  hands ; and  the  healthy  thing 
for  philosophy  is  to  leave  off  grubbing  underground  for 
what  effects  effectuation,  or  what  makes  action  act,  and 
to  try  to  solve  the  concrete  questions  of  where  effectu- 
ation in  this  world  is  located,  of  which  things  are  the 
true  causal  agents  there,  and  of  what  the  more  remote 
effects  consist. 

From  this  point  of  view  the  greater  sublimity  tradi- 
tionally attributed  to  the  metaphysical  inquiry,  the 
grubbing  inquiry,  entirely  disappears.  If  we  could 
know  what  causation  really  and  transcendentally  is  in 
itself,  the  only  use  of  the  knowledge  would  be  to  help 
us  to  recognize  an  actual  cause  when  we  had  one,  and 
so  to  track  the  future  course  of  operations  more  intel- 
ligently out.  The  mere  abstract  inquiry  into  causa- 
tion’s hidden  nature  is  not  more  sublime  than  any  other 
inquiry  equally  abstract.  Causation  inhabits  no  more 
sublime  level  than  anything  else.  It  lives,  apparently, 

not  pure  repetition,  as  the  dogma  of  the  literal  uniformity  of  nature  re- 
quires. Activity-situations  come,  in  short,  each  with  an  original  touch. 
A ‘principle’  of  free  will,  if  there  were  one,  would  doubtless  manifest 
itself  in  such  phenomena,  but  I never  saw,  nor  do  I now  see,  what  the 
principle  could  do  except  rehearse  the  phenomenon  beforehand,  or 
why  it  ever  should  be  invoked. 


392 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

in  the  dirt  of  the  world  as  well  as  in  the  absolute,  or 
in  man’s  unconquerable  mind.  The  worth  and  interest 
of  the  world  consists  not  in  its  elements,  be  these  ele- 
ments things,  or  be  they  the  conjunctions  of  things ; it 
exists  rather  in  the  dramatic  outcome  of  the  whole  pro- 
cess, and  in  the  meaning  of  the  succession  stages  which 
the  elements  work  out. 

My  colleague  and  master,  Josiah  Royce,  in  a page 
of  his  review  of  Stout’s  Analytic  Psychology,  in  Mind 
for  1897,  has  some  fine  words  on  this  point  with  which 
I cordially  agree.  I cannot  agree  with  his  separating  the 
notion  of  efficacy  from  that  of  activity  altogether  (this 
I understand  to  be  one  contention  of  his),  for  activities 
are  efficacious  whenever  they  are  real  activities  at  all. 
But  the  inner  nature  both  of  efficacy  and  of  activity  are 
superficial  problems,  I understand  Royce  to  say;  and 
the  only  point  for  us  in  solving  them  would  be  their  pos- 
sible use  in  helping  us  to  solve  the  far  deeper  problem 
of  the  course  and  meaning  of  the  world  of  life.  Life, 
says  our  colleague,  is  full  of  significance,  of  meaning,  of 
success  and  of  defeat,  of  hoping  and  of  striving,  of  long- 
ing, of  desire,  and  of  inner  value.  It  is  a total  presence 
that  embodies  worth.  To  live  our  own  lives  better  in  this 
presence  is  the  true  reason  why  we  wish  to  know  the 
elements  of  things ; so  even  we  psychologists  must  end 
on  this  pragmatic  note. 

The  urgent  problems  of  activity  are  thus  more  con- 
393 


APPENDIX  B 


crete.  They  all  are  problems  of  the  true  relation  of 
longer-span  to  shorter-span  activities.  When,  for  ex- 
ample, a number  of  ‘ ideas  ’ (to  use  the  name  traditional 
in  psychology)  grow  confluent  in  a larger  field  of  con- 
sciousness, do  the  smaller  activities  still  coexist  with 
the  wider  activities  then  experienced  by  the  conscious 
subject  ? And,  if  so,  do  the  wide  activities  accompany 
the  narrow  ones  inertly,  or  do  they  exert  control  ? Or 
do  they  perhaps  utterly  supplant  and  replace  them  and 
short-circuit  their  effects  ? Again,  when  a mental  ac- 
tivity-process and  a brain-cell  series  of  activities  both 
terminate  in  the  same  muscular  movement,  does  the 
mental  process  steer  the  neural  processes  or  not  ? Or, 
on  the  other  hand,  does  it  independently  short-circuit 
their  effects  ? Such  are  the  questions  that  we  must  begin 
with.  But  so  far  am  I from  suggesting  any  definitive  an- 
swer to  such  questions,  that  I hardly  yet  can  put  them 
clearly.  They  lead,  however,  into  that  region  of  pan- 
psychic and  ontologic  speculation  of  which  Professors 
Bergson  and  Strong  have  lately  enlarged  the  literature 
in  so  able  and  interesting  a way.  The  results  of  these 
authors  seem  in  many  respects  dissimilar,  and  I under- 
stand them  as  yet  but  imperfectly;  but  I cannot  help 
suspecting  that  the  direction  of  their  work  is  very 
promising,  and  that  they  have  the  hunter’s  instinct  for 
the  fruitful  trails. 


394 


APPENDIX  C 


ON  THE  NOTION  OF  REALITY  AS  CHANGING 

In  my  Principles  of  Psychology  (vol.  ii,  p.  646)  I gave 
the  name  of  the  ‘axiom  of  skipped  intermediaries  and 
transferred  relations’  to  a serial  principle  of  which  the 
foundation  of  logic,  the  dictum  de  omni  et  nullo  (or,  as  I 
expressed  it,  the  rule  that  what  is  of  a kind  is  of  that 
kind’s  kind),  is  the  most  familiar  instance.  More  than 
the  more  is  more  than  the  less,  equals  of  equals  are  equal, 
sames  of  the  same  are  the  same,  the  cause  of  a cause  is 
the  cause  of  its  effects,  are  other  examples  of  this  serial 
law.  Altho  it  applies  infallibly  and  without  restriction 
throughout  certain  abstract  series,  where  the  ‘sames,’ 
‘causes,’  etc.,  spoken  of,  are  ‘pure,’  and  have  no  proper- 
ties save  their  sameness,  causality,  etc.,  it  cannot  be  ap- 
plied offhand  to  concrete  objects  with  numerous  proper- 
ties and  relations,  for  it  is  hard  to  trace  a straight  line 
of  sameness,  causation,  or  whatever  it  may  be,  through 
a series  of  such  objects  without  swerving  into  some 
‘respect’  where  the  relation,  as  pursued  originally,  no 
longer  holds:  the  objects  have  so  many  ‘aspects’  that 
we  are  constantly  deflected  from  our  original  direction, 
and  find,  we  know  not  why,  that  we  are  following  some- 
thing different  from  what  we  started  with.  Thus  a cat 
is  in  a sense  the  same  as  a mouse-trap,  and  a mouse- 
trap the  same  as  a bird-cage;  but  in  no  valuable  or 

395 


APPENDIX  C 


easily  intelligible  sense  is  a cat  the  same  as  a bird-cage. 
Commodore  Perry  was  in  a sense  the  cause  of  the  new 
regime  in  Japan,  and  the  new  regime  was  the  cause  of 
the  russian  Douma;  but  it  would  hardly  profit  us  to 
insist  on  holding  to  Perry  as  the  cause  of  the  Douma : 
the  terms  have  grown  too  remote  to  have  any  real  or 
practical  relation  to  each  other.  In  every  series  of  real 
terms,  not  only  do  the  terms  themselves  and  their  asso- 
ciates and  environments  change,  but  we  change,  and 
their  meaning  for  us  changes,  so  that  new  kinds  of  same- 
ness and  types  of  causation  continually  come  into  view 
and  appeal  to  our  interest.  Our  earlier  lines,  having 
grown  irrelevant,  are  then  dropped.  The  old  terms  can 
no  longer  be  substituted  nor  the  relations  ‘transferred,’ 
because  of  so  many  new  dimensions  into  which  experi- 
ence has  opened.  Instead  of  a straight  line,  it  now  fol- 
lows a zigzag ; and  to  keep  it  straight,  one  must  do  vio- 
lence to  its  spontaneous  development.  Not  that  one 
might  not  possibly,  by  careful  seeking  (tho  I doubt 
it),  find  some  line  in  nature  along  which  terms  literally 
the  same,  or  causes  causal  in  the  same  way,  might  be 
serially  strung  without  limit,  if  one’s  interest  lay  in  such 
finding.  Within  such  lines  our  axioms  might  hold, 
causes  might  cause  their  effect’s  effects,  etc. ; but  such 
lines  themselves  would,  if  found,  only  be  partial  mem- 
bers of  a vast  natural  network,  within  the  other  lines  of 
which  you  could  not  say,  in  any  sense  that  a wise  man  or 

396 


ON  REALITY  AS  CHANGING 


l,  sane  man  would  ever  think  of,  in  any  sense  that  would 
not  be  concretely  silly,  that  the  principle  of  skipt  inter- 
mediaries still  held  good.  In  the  'practical  wmrld,  the 
world  whose  significances  we  follow,  sames  of  the  same 
are  certainly  not  sames  of  one  another;  and  things 
constantly  cause  other  things  without  being  held  re- 
sponsible for  everything  of  which  those  other  things 
are  causes. 

Professor  Bergson,  believing  as  he  does  in  a heracli- 
tean  ‘devenir  reel,’  ought,  if  I rightly  understand  him, 
positively  to  deny  that  in  the  actual  world  the  logical 
axioms  hold  good  without  qualification.  Not  only,  ac- 
cording to  him,  do  terms  change,  so  that  after  a certain 
time  the  very  elements  of  things  are  no  longer  what  they 
were,  but  relations  also  change,  so  as  no  longer  to  obtain 
in  the  same  identical  way  between  the  new  things  that 
have  succeeded  upon  the  old  ones.  If  this  were  really 
so,  then  however  indefinitely  sames  might  still  be  sub- 
stituted for  sames  in  the  logical  world  of  nothing  but 
pure  sameness,  in  the  world  of  real  operations  every  line 
of  sameness  actually  started  and  followed  up  would 
eventually  give  out,  and  cease  to  be  traceable  any  far- 
ther. Sames  of  the  same,  in  such  a world,  will  not  al- 
ways (or  rather,  in  a strict  sense  will  never)  be  the  same 
as  one  another,  for  in  such  a world  there  is  no  literal  or 
ideal  sameness  among  numerical  differents.  Nor  in  such 
a world  will  it  be  true  that  the  cause  of  the  cause  is 

397 


APPENDIX  C 


unreservedly  the  cause  of  the  effect;  for  if  we  follow 
lines  of  real  causation,  instead  of  contenting  ourselves 
writh  Hume’s  and  Kant’s  eviscerated  schematism,  we 
find  that  remoter  effects  are  seldom  aimed  at  by  causal 
intentions,1  that  no  one  kind  of  causal  activity  contin- 
ues indefinitely,  and  that  the  principle  of  skipt  inter- 
mediaries can  be  talked  of  only  in  abstrado.2 

Volumes  i,  ii,  and  iii  of  the  Monist  (1890-1893)  con- 
tain a number  of  articles  by  Mr.  Charles  S.  Peirce,  arti- 
cles the  originality  of  which  has  apparently  prevented 
their  making  an  immediate  impression,  but  which,  if  I 
mistake  not,  will  prove  a gold-mine  of  ideas  for  thinkers 
of  the  coming  generation.  Mr.  Peirce’s  views,  tho 
reached  so  differently,  are  altogether  congruous  with 
Bergson’s.  Both  philosophers  believe  that  the  appear- 
ance of  novelty  in  things  is  genuine.  To  an  observer 
standing  outside  of  its  generating  causes,  novelty  can 
appear  only  as  so  much  ‘chance’;  to  one  who  stands 
inside  it  is  the  expression  of  ‘free  creative  activity.’ 
Peirce’s  ‘ tychism  ’ is  thus  practically  synonymous  with 
Bergson’s  ‘devenir  reel.’  The  common  objection  to 
admitting  novelties  is  that  by  jumping  abruptly  in, 
ex  nihilo,  they  shatter  the  world’s  rational  continuity. 
Peirce  meets  this  objection  by  combining  his  tychism 

1 Compare  the  douma  with  what  Perry  aimed  at. 

2 Compare  Appendix  B,  as  to  what  I mean  here  by  ‘ real  ’ casual 
activity. 


398 


ON  REALITY  AS  CHANGING 


with  an  express  doctrine  of  ‘synechism’  or  continuity, 
the  two  doctrines  merging  into  the  higher  synthesis  on 
which  he  bestows  the  name  of  ‘agapasticism  {loc.  cit.,  iii, 
188),  which  means  exactly  the  same  thing  as  Bergson’s 
‘evolution  creatrice.’  Novelty,  as  empirically  found, 
does  n’t  arrive  by  jumps  and  jolts,  it  leaks  in  insensibly, 
for  adjacents  in  experience  are  always  interfused,  the 
smallest  real  datum  being  both  a coming  and  a going, 
and  even  numerical  distinctness  being  realized  effectively 
only  after  a concrete  interval  has  passed.  The  intervals 
also  deflect  us  from  the  original  paths  of  direction, 
and  all  the  old  identities  at  last  give  out,  for  the  fatally 
continuous  infiltration  of  otherness  warps  things  out  of 
every  original  rut.  Just  so,  in  a curve,  the  same  direc- 
tion is  never  followed,  and  the  conception  of  it  as  a 
myriad-sided  polygon  falsifies  it  by  supposing  it  to  do 
so  for  however  short  a time.  Peirce  speaks  of  an  ‘ infini- 
tesimal’ tendency  to  diversification.  The  mathematical 
notion  of  an  infinitesimal  contains,  in  truth,  the  whole 
paradox  of  the  same  and  yet  the  nascent  other,  of  an 
identity  that  won’t  keep  except  so  far  as  it  keeps  failing, 
that  wTon’t  transfer , any  more  than  the  serial  relations 
in  question  transfer,  when  you  apply  them  to  reality 
instead  of  applying  them  to  concepts  alone. 

A friend  of  mine  has  an  idea,  which  illustrates  on  such 
a magnified  scale  the  impossibility  of  tracing  the  same 
line  through  reality,  that  I will  mention  it  here.  He 

399 


APPENDIX  C 


thinks  that  nothing  more  is  needed  to  make  history 
‘scientific’  than  to  get  the  content  of  any  two  epochs 
(say  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  and  the  end  of  the  nine- 
teenth century)  accurately  defined,  then  accurately  to 
define  the  direction  of  the  change  that  led  from  the  one 
epoch  into  the  other,  and  finally  to  prolong  the  line  of 
that  direction  into  the  future.  So  prolonging  the  line,  he 
thinks,  we  ought  to  be  able  to  define  the  actual  state 
of  things  at  any  future  date  we  please.  We  all  feel  the 
essential  unreality  of  such  a conception  of  ‘history’  as 
this ; but  if  such  a synechistic  pluralism  as  Peirce,  Berg- 
son, and  I believe  in,  be  what  really  exists,  every  phe- 
nomenon of  development,  even  the  simplest,  would 
prove  equally  rebellious  to  our  science  should  the  latter 
pretend  to  give  us  literally  accurate  instead  of  approxi- 
mate, or  statistically  generalized,  pictures  of  the  devel- 
opment of  reality. 

I can  give  no  further  account  of  Mr.  Peirce’s  ideas  in 
this  note,  but  I earnestly  advise  all  students  of  Bergson 
to  compare  them  with  those  of  the  french  philosopher. 


INDEX 


INDEX  TO  THE  LECTURES 


Absolute,  the,  49, 108-109, 114  ff, 
173,  175,  190  ff.,  203,  271, 
292  ff.,  311 ; not  the  same  as 
God,  111,  134;  its  rationality, 
114  f.;  its  irrationality,  117- 
129;  difficulty  of  conceiving  it, 
195. 

Absolutism,  34,  38,  40,  54,  72  f, 
79, 122,  310.  See  Monism. 

Achilles  and  tortoise,  228,  255. 

All-form,  the,  34,  324. 

Analogy,  8,  151  f. 

Angels,  164. 

Antinomies,  231,  239. 

Abistides,  304. 

Bailey,  S.,  5. 

Bergson,  H.,  Lecture  VI,  passim. 
His  characteristics,  226  f,  266. 

‘Between,’  70. 

Block-universe,  310,  328. 

Bradley,  F.  H.,  46,  69,  79,  211, 
220,  296. 

Brain,  160. 

Caird,  E.,  89,  95,  137. 

Cato,  304. 

Causation,  258.  See  Influence. 

Change,  231,  253. 

Chesterton,  203,  303. 

Compounding  of  mental  states, 
168,  173,  186  f„  268,  281,  284, 
292,  296. 

Concepts,  217,  234  f. 

Conceptual  method,  243  f.,  246, 
253. 

Concrete  reality,  283,  286. 


Confluence,  326. 

Conflux,  257. 

Consciousness,  superhuman,  156, 
310  f. ; its  compound  nature, 
168,  173,  186  f.,  289. 

Continuity,  256  f.,  325. 

Contradiction,  in  Hegel,  89  f. 

Creation,  29,  119. 

Death,  303. 

Degrees,  74. 

Dialectic  method,  89. 

Difference,  257  f. 

Diminutive  epithets,  12,  24. 

Discreteness  of  change,  231. 

‘Each-form,’  the,  34,  325. 

Earth,  the,  in  Fechner’s  philo- 
sophy, 156  ; is  an  angel, 
164. 

Earth-soul,  152  f. 

Elan  vital,  262. 

Empiricism,  264,  277;  and  reli- 
gion, 314;  defined,  7. 

Endosmosis,  257. 

Epithets.  See  Diminutive. 

Evil,  310. 

Experience,  312;  religious,  307. 

Extremes,  67,  74. 

‘Faith-ladder,’  328. 

‘Fall,’  the,  119,  310. 

Fechner,  Lecture  IV,  passim. 
His  life,  145-150 ; he  reasons  by 
analogy,  151;  his  genius,  154; 
compared  with  Royce,  173, 
207 ; not  a genuine  monist,  293 ; 


403 


r 

INDEX 


his  God;  and  religious  experi- 
ence, 308. 

Ferrier,  Jas.,  13. 

Finite  experience,  39,  48,  182, 
192-193. 

Finiteness,  of  God,  111,  124, 
294. 

Foreignness,  31. 

German  manner  of  philosophiz- 
ing, 17. 

God,  24  f.,  Ill,  124,  193,  240, 
294. 

Green,  T.  H.,  6,  24,  137,  278. 

Haldane,  R.  B.,  138. 

Hegel,  Lecture  III,  passim,  11, 
85,  207,  211,  219,  296.  His 
vision,  88,  98  f.,  104;  his  use 
of  double  negation,  102;  his 
vicious  intellectualism  106; 
Haldane  on,  138;  McTaggart 
on,  140;  Royce  on,  143. 

Hodgson,  S.  H.,  282. 

Horse,  265. 

Hume,  19,  267. 

Idealism,  36.  See  Absolutism. 

Identity,  93. 

Immortality,  Fechner’s  view  of, 
171. 

‘ Independent  ’ beings,  55,  58. 

Indeterminism,  77. 

Infinity,  229. 

Influence,  258,  561. 

Intellect,  its  function  is  practical, 
247  f.,  252. 

Intellectualism,  vicious,  60,  218. 

Intellectualist  logic,  216,  259, 
261. 


Intellectualist  method,  291. 

Interaction,  56. 

Intimacy,  31. 

Irrationality,  81;  of  the  abso- 
lute, 117-129. 

Jacks,  L,  P.,  35. 

Joachim,  H.,  121,  141. 

Jones,  H.,  52. 

Kant,  19, 199,  238,  240. 

Leibnitz,  119. 

Life,  523. 

Log,  323. 

Logic,  92,  211;  intellectualist, 
217,  242. 

Lotze,  55,  120. 

Luther,  304. 

McTaggart,  51,  74  f.,  120, 
140  f.,  183. 

Manyness  in  oneness,  322.  See 
Compounding. 

Mental  chemistry,  185. 

Mill,  J.  S„  242,  260. 

Mind,  dust  theory,  189. 

Mind,  the  eternal,  137.  See  Abso- 
lute. 

Monism,  36,  117,  125,  201,  313, 
321  f. ; Fechner’s,  153.  See  Ab- 
solutism. 

Monomaniacs,  78. 

Motion,  233,  238,  254  ; Zeno  on, 
228. 

Myers,  F.  W.  H.,  315. 

Nature,  21,  286. 

Negation,  93  f. ; double,  102. 

Newton,  260. 


404 


INDEX 


Other,  95,  312;  ‘its  own  other,’ 
108  f.,  282. 

Oxford,  3,  313,  331. 

Pantheism,  24,  28. 

Paulsen,  18,  22. 

Personality,  divided,  298. 

Philosophers,  their  method,  9; 
their  common  desire,  11  f.; 
they  must  reason,  13. 

Philosophies,  their  types,  23,  31. 

Phocion,  304. 

Plant-soul,  165  f. 

Pluralism,  45,  76,  79,  311,  319, 
321  f. 

Polytheism,  310. 

Practical  reason,  329. 

Psychic  synthesis,  185.  See  Com- 
pounding. 

Psychical  research,  299. 

‘Qua,’  39,  47,  267,  270. 

‘Quatenus,’  47,  267. 

Rationalism  defined,  7,  98;  its 
thinness,  144,  237. 

Rationality,  81,  112  f.,  319  f. 

Reality,  262  f.,  264,  283  f. 

Reason,  286,  312. 

Relating,  7. 

Relations,  70,  278  fT. ; ‘external,’ 
80. 

Religious  experiences,  305  f. 

Ritchie,  72. 

Royce,  61  f.,  115,  173,  182  f., 
197,  207,  212,  265,  296. 


Same,  269,  281. 

Savage  philosophy,  21. 

Science,  145. 

Sensations,  279. 

Socialism,  78. 

Socrates,  284. 

Soul,  199,  209. 

‘Some,’  79. 

Sphinx,  22. 

Spinoza,  47. 

Spiritualistic  philosophy,  23. 
Sugar,  220,  232. 

Synthesis,  psychic.  See  Com- 
pounding. 

Taylor,  A.  E.,  76, 139,  212. 
Theism,  24. 

Thick,  the,  136. 

‘Thickness  ’ of  Fechner’s  philoso- 
phy, 144. 

Thin,  the,  136. 

Thinness  of  the  current  tran- 
scendentalism, 144,  174  f. 
Time,  232. 

Units  of  reality,  287. 

Vision,  in  philosophy,  20. 

Wells,  H.  G.,  78. 

Will  to  believe,  328. 

Witnesses,  as  implied  in  experi- 
ence, 200. 

Wundt,  W.,  185. 

Zeno,  228. 


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